With all the unusual weather we've been having how'd you like to see something like this? It almost looks biblical doesn't it?
http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/world/2012/09/19/australia-fire-tornado.hln.html
We see them every year when the ranchers burn off thousands of acres of grazing land in the Flint Hills.
I saw them in So. California when the farmers were burning off the asparagus fields to prepare for the new crop to come up.
Never seen one, but there were a boat load of dust devils at Mid MI when the ProMod's were running.
Never seen anything like that (thank god) but when my kids played baseball when they were younger, those little "dust tornados" would snatch the ball-caps off of all the infielders.
Firewhirls are apparently pretty common out west during wildland fires. I'm on the fire dept for our little town here and we had some fairly intensive wildland fire training back in the fall....we watched several videos on how firewhirls form and what they are indicative of.
Cool to watch...from a distance.
dlowrance, we had wildland fire training a few summers ago and the practical exercise was burning off about 40 acres of mesquite infested ranchland on a 105 degree day. We used drip torches around the perimeter and as the fire burned toward the center, there was some good examples of these. Would have been a lot more awesome to see if we weren't all overheated and very exhausted.
Fires create their own wind. It is impressive what fire can do.
I'll find out tomorrow. I have a huge brush pile that will see the torch. I figure I can keep rotating sides to stay warm. Supposed to be -8 in the morning. Still a bunch of snow on the ground, and the wind will carry any embers to an open field that is snow covered vs. the woods.