My First Dust Devils: Vortices are all Around Us

AccuWeather HQ here in State College, Pennsylvania, has received 0.89 of an inch of rain so far this September, about 25 percent of normal through this date. We've received next to no rain during the last 16 days... and we're not alone; parts of the state are even worse-off! Here's a look at the percentage of precipitation for the last two weeks:

I can't remember when we've been so dry. There's also not much wind lately, which is very rare here. As a result, I've filmed dust devils for the first time in my life, in the freshly plowed fields near HQ. The fresh dirt heated up quicker than the surrounding fields' crops, and voila, dust devils. Here's one of the videos I took last week:

Dust devils are generally not dangerous and have low wind speeds, though it's probably not a great idea to run through one, especially with your camera because that dust can get into places that it might be hard to clean out.

I was quoted in this AccuWeather.com article "PHOTOS: Whirlwinds of Fire, Water, Ice, Earth and Air" back in July, and also recommended the photos within this Haiku Deck:

Whirlwinds - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires

"Vortices of air constantly surround us, invisible to the naked eye until something physical gives them shape. While tornadoes are the most well-known, destructive form, some aspects of tornado formation still pose a mystery for meteorologists studying the dynamics of a thunderstorm."

Here's another video from this afternoon, when Henry Margusity and I caught a dozen more devils on film, including two spinning around each other (video is shaky; stable version coming soon).

"Unlike tornadoes, vortices animated by snow, leaves and even insects are often the result of wind which is deflected by natural geology or solid objects, which cause the air flows to whirl, AccuWeather.com Meteorologist Jesse Ferrell said. Other vortices made of fire, dust and steam are often the result of thermal uplift caused by variations between the surface temperature and the temperature of the atmosphere."