Vortexes, from dust devils to lava-nadoes and even... frognados?

Have you ever seen a whirlwind? Dust devil? Firenado? Here's every wind vortex, rated and explained.

The atmosphere is complex, and invisible vortexes twist around us all the time. It just takes something to give them form, anything from dust to fire to snow. Here's a rundown of more than a dozen different spinning weather phenomena.

Dust devils

Form on a hot, calm day
Strength: Weak to medium
Danger: Minimal to moderate

One of the most common forms of spin in the atmosphere is the dust devil. They are formed when the ground heats significantly while the air above remains cool. A less dense pocket of warm air rises, and more follows.

As the column of air begins to rotate, cool air eventually descends in the middle of the vortex, causing it to move along the ground as a chimney of sorts.

Dust devils are generally seen on hot days when winds are calm. Otherwise, the temperature differential between the ground and the air would be reduced, and they couldn't form.

Multiple dust devils can exist at once. They are normally weak but can have winds up to 100 mph and can do minor damage and injure bystanders. In 2019 in Australia, a dust devil picked up an unsuspecting paraglider. In August 2024, two skydivers were killed when they were sucked into a dust devil in California.

Dust devils have even been spotted on Mars.

Hay devils, coal devils and even bugnadoes

Dust devils can be invisible, as is the case in some bounce house incidents, but they can also turn various colors from black to red, depending on what type of dirt they pick up. They can also pick up leaves, hay or even tumbleweeds and spin them in circles.

Various types of insects, from mosquitoes to mayflies, can even get caught up in a dust devil's vortex or form their own twist naturally, something we call a bugnado.

Whirlwinds

Form on a windy day
Strength: Weak
Danger: Low

Vortexes of wind can form on windy days as wind curls around buildings or structures. You may have seen trash or leaves form into a whirlwind on city streets. Wind shear - different wind speeds at different heights - can cause whirlwinds. In one rare example, a family dog was taken for a brief ride by an invisible whirlwind on a windy day.

Fire whirls

Form during a wildfire
Strength: Medium
Danger: High

Fire whirls, sometimes called fire tornadoes, are not uncommon during wildfires. As with dust devils, the ground is hot, and the air above is cooler. Vortexes form, often egged on by wind shear. The whirls can then pick up smoke, or rarely, fire, which makes them quite dangerous. One famous video from 2016 shows a Canadian firefighter outrunning a fire whirl by jumping into a lake.

Firenadoes

Form during a wildfire
Strength: Very strong
Danger: High

Large, powerful wildfires can create their own clouds and even supercell thunderstorms. Tornadoes formed by these storms are just like those from a thunderstorm and are called firenadoes, although this term is also used interchangeably with fire whirls.

The first firenado, rated EF3 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, was documented in Australia in 2003 and had winds as high as 160 mph. A second, violent firenado was the EF3 fire tornado observed during the Carr fire in California in 2018, another EF3 twister that produced 143-mph winds.

Lava-nadoes

Form in or near a volcano
Strength: Medium
Danger: High

A relatively new type of fire whirl, which we'll call a lava whirl or lava-nado, was documented for the first time recently at Hawaii's Kilauea Volcano. In the video, you can see lava being lifted out of the volcano's lava field and into the air briefly.

Snow devils

Form on a windy day with snow on the ground
Strength: Weak to medium
Danger: Low

Snow devils, sometimes snow called snownadoes, are formed from wind shear. As winds blow at different speeds at different heights, vortexes form and pick up snow from the ground.

Steam devils

Form over water on a calm, foggy morning
Strength: Weak
Danger: Low

Steam devils are formed over water but are produced by the same process as a dust devil -- a warmer surface, in this case, water under cold air. If there's fog already on the water, it can be picked up by the rotating vortex, creating a steam devil, which really should be called a fog devil. Like dust devils, winds are typically calm in the area where steam devils form.

A second, more rare kind of steam devil can form at sea in rough conditions during Arctic sea smoke. It's not actually smoke but steam which continually re-forms as cold air rapidly moves over very warm water. This phenomenon occurred in 2023 at Lake Champlain in Vermont.

Waterspouts

Form on a relatively calm day with puffy clouds or showers
Strength: Weak to strong
Danger: Medium

Waterspouts can be dangerous when they move onshore, at which point they are considered a tornado and can throw objects or damage structures.

There are two types of waterspouts.

Fair-weather waterspouts form when benign cumulus clouds during light winds start on the ocean's surface and reach up to connect to the base of a cloud.

Tornadic waterspouts are essentially tornadoes over water, which develop out of the parent cloud of a supercell thunderstorm, just like those over land.

Since they are only picking up tiny water droplets, waterspouts often look very smooth in appearance, and can appear otherworldly, like this one in Florida in 2013 or this famous photo of a waterspout illuminated by lightning taken in 1993.

Funnel clouds, tornadoes, gustnadoes, landspouts and QLCS

Form on a stormy day
Strength: Weak to very strong
Danger: Varies

Tornadoes are typically vortexes of wind that form from a supercell thunderstorm cloud. Shapes of tornadoes include rope, cone, wedge, and stovepipe. There are, however, several other types of tornadoes that form in different ways.

QLCS Tornado:

This acronym stands for Quasi-Linear Convective System, meaning a tornado occurring in a line of storms, as opposed to an individual supercell.

Landspout:

Landspouts are considered a type of tornado by the National Weather Service, but they form from the ground up, typically during stormy weather, and they don't connect to a cloud. It can be hard to tell the difference between a landspout, a gustnado, and a dust devil, but one helpful clue is that dust devils typically form on clear, dry, hot days.

Gustnado:

A gustnado forms when the edge of the downdraft of a severe thunderstorm -- a gust front -- causes the air to spin, from the ground up, but the gustnado does not connect to a cloud. Generally weaker than supercell tornadoes, gustnadoes can cause considerable damage. Since they aren't connected to the cloud, gustnadoes are not considered to be tornadoes.

Funnel cloud:

Funnel clouds are vortexes that form like tornadoes but have not yet reached the ground. Sometimes funnel clouds appear to end in midair, but they are invisible below that, and there can still be swirling dirt or debris at ground-level, which defines them as a tornado. If they do not reach the ground, funnel clouds are not officially tornadoes.

Cold-air funnel

A cold-air funnel is a type of funnel cloud that forms when very cold air aloft leads to a small funnel at high elevation, which rarely touches down.

Sharknado? How about frognado?

Sorry, folks. This one's just ridiculous, although tornadoes have been known to pick up small fish and frogs then deposit them from above down the road. Frogs have fallen from the sky in Serbia at least four times in history, most recently in 2005. Fish were picked up by a waterspout and deposited on the ground in Australia in 2010.

From the familiar whirl of dust devils to the sometimes intense fury of firenadoes, the variety of spinning weather phenomena underscores the dynamic and often unpredictable nature of our atmosphere. Each vortex, whether driven by heat, wind, fire, snow or water, highlights the intricate processes at work in our environment.

While some, like dust devils and snow devils, pose minimal danger and offer a captivating spectacle, others, such as fire whirls and tornadoes, are a reminder of the formidable forces that can impact our lives. Understanding these phenomena enhances appreciation of the natural world and underscores the critical need for awareness and preparedness in the face of these sometimes powerful weather events.

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