Down here in my hollow I’m protected from the worst of the wind but when it gets hot, as it is today, I do sometimes get dust devils off the wash and some of them can be impressive. One just roared by, doing random damage…
That’s a brand-new sheet of 5/8 plywood that a few moments ago was atop my stack of siding. The wind picked it up along with the tarp it was weighing down, flung it neatly over my sawbuck without hitting it, straight toward the Jeep, and then it got wedged between a juniper and one of my pallet stacks. Getting it out of there is going to be interesting.
That is an 8X8 roof panel I laboriously brought over here after tearing down the last of J&H’s goat houses. If it survived its flight, I still hope to use it as a roof over my workbench after the Lair is sided. The wind effortlessly flung it 28 yards – I paced it off – and if it had gone the other way it would have been in my living room or at least smashed against the Lair’s wall, probably taking out the front window in the bargain.
And yet here’s this little table, standing between the two events and covered with rodent traps and light junk, none of which even moved.
Sheesh. Usually they just throw empty water bottles around and fling some dust.
‘Twas me, I’d plan to get that plywood out of there soonest. Shredded plywood doesn’t make good mulch. 🙂 And the dust devils can be incredibly strong. I’d say you lucked out this time.
We used to have monster dust devils out on a big dry lake west of Lucerne Valley. One day a “devil” came through and made a real mess of a model rocket meet being held there. A whole row of RVs overturned and campers ripped off trucks. The cars in the next row, and the bunch of tents and stuff a little farther east were not touched.
Came out of a clear blue sky… no warning whatsoever.
Ah, yes! Lucerne Dry Lake! I spent many happy hours out there, often chasing Easy-Ups around.
And don’t call them ‘model rockets’ around the guys at the meets, ML. That’s quite triggering language. They’re ‘high power rockets,’ if you please. 🙂
Dust Devils are small tornadoes, being from Kansas, you don’t mess with tornadoes no matter how small. I have observed, you folks out here are quite caviler about such manifestations of Mother Nature.