Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Georgia Dust Devil!

Happy Dew (Dust Devil) Dance Time!

Congratulations to our very own Dewdrop for capturing a very impressive South Georgia Dust Devil on her lunch break yesterday!



Additional details by Dew... Bf spotted the dust devil a couple of miles back, seeing the top well above the treeline, thinking there was a fire up ahead, as it looked like a smoke plume. As we came upon the scene, he quickly realized that it was a rotating column of dust and air, at that point having only about a 5 foot base and about a 100 foot heigth. It had strong rotation and was basically stationary in the middle of a dirt clearing of land, though it was steadily drawing in more to generate a larger base. So, bf pulled into the turn lane in the middle of the 5 lane road and I started snapping pics... available here. Well, then, it started to move... toward us! As it did, it sucked in even more dust and debris, so it was video time. I shot the video as it came toward us into the road. It crossed right behind us, and was taking up about 3 1/2 lanes at the base, pulling in debris. Some passing cars traveling through the base, hurt it's momentum slightly, but it quickly re-generated on the other side of the road in the lumber yard. It's base grew to about 20 or 30 feet, but it wasn't as high with its dust field, though it carried debris about 50 feet up into the air. Very cool. We watched it until the police officer drove up, flashing his lights as a means of intimidation and scooted us along... IT WAS AWESOME!!!

1 comment:

Dewdrop said...

Pardon the language, y'all. Bf was a little excited. Thanks, Mike, for the kudos and the post. I can't believe I forgot to post it here. What was I thinking??!