As Summer approaches, many will enjoy air travel, hang gliding, parachuting and other forms of aviation travel and sports. Some typical hot weather phenomena are harmless to some and trepidatious to others. One in particular may seem completely harmless on the ballfield but to the airborne, it can be deadly — the dust devil.
A dust devil is a mini-tornado or vortex. According to the United States National Transportation Safety Board, it is a vortex formed by a change in temperature. During the summer months, the ground, especially dusty terrain, in the American Southwest can become hotter than the air temperature. Hot air rises and so this air at the ground begins to rise straight up. The surrounding air comes in to fill the void and the vortex begins.
Like a tornado, this small vortex spins and sucks dust up with it and then often moves a short distance until the vortex collapses and the dust devil ceases to exist.
Of course, one of the reasons why we call them dust devils is because they appear to be a cloud of dust in a vortex moving along the ground. However, even if there is no dust, the vortex effect can still form but remain invisible.
