Ever seen a dust devil?

[Protostar]

I saw my first dust devil. Sitting outside after carting all the beer cartons and other burnable material to our "pit" On a "windless" afternoon, a weird wind came and
tosses our material from the pit all over the yard! as it went by. but this dust devil I saw was not on a windy day. It was a wind that just blew by. (huh)
I found this article from space.com to explain what this dust devil is: here's snippets of the article:

Delving into Dust Devils
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 03 October 2005

On a hot and dry day in the American Southwest, it's common to see swirls of dust race across the landscape. They sometimes separate from the ground and soar high into a clear blue sky.
Dust devils are gentler, with winds typically matching freeway speed limits, and they have a completely different origin. They don't depend on storminess, precipitation or even humidity.
When the Sun hits the surface of Earth (or Mars) in the morning, bubbles of air become much warmer than the air just a few feet above the surface, and the warm pockets rise.
If there is even the gentlest breeze and some swirling caused by rocks or variations in terrain, the rising air can begin to rotate. This rotation causes the developing column of air to incorporate other rising bubbles.
Once winds swirl and pick up speed, they can lift dust from the surface, which is what makes the whole phenomenon visible.

[Mezurashi]

I grew up on the flat plate of Southern Alberta which is constantly under assault from the dry winds off the Rockies ... I am far too familiar with dust devils.

The weirdest ones I remember were like the one you described, calm, still air and no impending storm or indication of wind. Suddenly a gust comes through and resolves itself as a mini-twister for a short time and then goes away, either physically in that it exits stage left or just gives it up and falls apart. But none that I experienced personally seemed to be as big as you described. The strongest ones I saw whipped newspaper and leaves around, but only made empty cans roll a bit and so forth.

A Saudi kid I met years later (in the same place) told me a story about how these things were the trapped spirits of evildoers, trying to steal stuff from the afterlife. I like that story, and the behaviour of dust devils certainly can be interpreted as the actions of long dead thieves.

[Marajadex]

A Saudi kid I met years later (in the same place) told me a story about how these things were the trapped spirits of evildoers, trying to steal stuff from the afterlife. I like that story, and the behaviour of dust devils certainly can be interpreted as the actions of long dead thieves.
Wow!!! That is a cool story. Wonder if that would hold true for water spouts.

[TimberWolf]

Maybe spirits of people who died of dehydration

[Defiant Noquisi]

Hey Timberwolf, nice to see you post!

I dont know about dust devils being "gentle". We had em all the time when I lived in Arizona. One of them was strong enough to pick up our car and move it almost into the median and we were in the slow lane.

[CrystalSword]

While not a dust devil per sé, I was inside a nice whirlwind last summer. I had just arrived at my grandmother's lake and was swimming out toward the barge/raft. Since I was doing the backstroke, I had a good view of the beach. All of a sudden, this massive dust devil forms on the beach; I'd say it had a base diameter of 10 feet and was 30 feet high. This thing begins flipping towels and sand everywhere, and most of my family that was either on the raft already or elsewhere was watching the whirlwind. While still on the beach, it picked up an inflatable plastic raft which got caught for a LONG time inside the circulation. Now, the dust devil moved onto the water and was headed RIGHT FOR ME!!! While it was just a plain old whirlwind then (it lost the dust upon moving over the water), it went over my head. Boy, that thing was whipping! My hair and the water around me was being pulled into it, but in the case of the water, the wind wasn't strong enough to make it a waterspout, and all that was seen was little wavelets. It was awesome.

In the end, the whirlwind just missed the barge and dissipated. But while not visible, the circulation must have been about 300 feet high overall, because the raft was a shiny speck high in the sky after the whirlwind dissipated.

I was told later that my uncle found the raft in my grandfather's field...about a mile from where it was picked up. I believe (can't remember for sure) that the raft was popped as well.