Rachel says she was driving down Highway 18 on the way to the Oregon Coast when she came upon this massive dust devil in a farm field very close to Dayton, Oregon.
We have dust devils each summer (and even during stretches of dry weather not in the summer) that put on a show. But this is the best video I’ve seen, myself, in years!
How Dust Devils Form
Here’s a really simple chart that explains what happens. When I visit schools, I use a pencil parallel to the desk then show it tilting up. Once it is up, the dust devil acts like a vaccum cleaner–sucking up light, dry dust and dirt and pulling it toward the sky. This same thing happens other times–but if the soils moist and heavy–not much may get picked up. So the ‘dust devil’ may remain largely invisible even though the same column of air is up and spinning around!
Hello Bruce,
Thanks for mentioning the smoke in Portland from the wildfires in the Gorge. Can you say when this is going to end? My asthma is flaring up and my eyes and sinuses are stinging.
Thanks,
Josh
Josh–sorry about the asthma. Smoke is never good for that. Cooler (and cleaner!) ocean air is on the way for the next few days. So any smoke will move east. Thanks for the post.
Sorry to write again, but I suddenly found my last message got cut off :-(…
Anyway, just wanted to say I saw a number of dust devils along Highway #5, the last time I was in Oregon. (July 1995). Very intresting to watch!
Roland–that’s so awesome. It’s one of my favorite surprises during an I-5 drive in the summer time! How hot did you get on Friday? We were 95!
We got up to 85F on Friday, 84 today. I find that my temperatures are about 10F cooler than yours when there’s a heat wave in the summer. However, it looks like we’ll get a good shot of rain tomorrow and maybe Monday.