Lamar-Plant City
(Storm Tracker)
Thu May 03 2007 10:01 PM
Very large whirlwind/dust devil....

Maybe this isn't significant, but in my 43 years, I have never seen anything quite like it. Yesterday (May2) at about 5:30pm as I was coming home from work here in Plant City (east of Tampa), I saw the largest, most impressive and most persistent dust devil I have ever seen. At first glance it REALLY looke like a tornado. What was impressive is that it was constructed like a tornado and was at least 5 miles away from me. I drove toward it for about 10 minutes (in traffic), watching it slowly move from north to south just to be sure I wasn't seeing things (I had NOT had anything to drink...honest:). It was then that I realized that it must have reached a height of 500-1000 feet as its top looked very close to the flattened thin cloud cover over central Florida that day. It slowly faded and dissipated but was an impressive sight. Has anyone ever seen something like this? Most dust devils I have seen before were short-lived and rarely seemed to extend upward more than a hundred feet or so. I HAVE seen one rip the roof off of a mobile home from within 50 feet before, so I know they can pack a punch. I have seen no news reports on it, but it was over a relatively sparse area east of town. Conditions were....hot (at least 90), not a lot of wind overall, with flattened cumulus that didn't look more than about 2000 feet to the bottom, with lots of haze from fires to the north. Am I crazy? Thanks for your input!


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