Dust devil is no match for R.I. youth soccer game – The Boston Globe

Leanne Walker said that what quickly came out of thin air and started as a curiosity-grabber turned slightly chaotic.

“People near it didn’t know how to react, with some running away and others running right into it, and some not reacting at all!” said Walker, who captured the dust devil on video. “What struck me most was how fast it was moving and how much debris it picked up.”

At one point, the spout picks up what appears to be a rectangular object, which Walker later discovered was a piece of sheet metal dancing in the dust devil’s swirling winds. Others mentioned seeing cars with minor damage. There were no reported injuries.

Stunned spectators can be heard asking, “Is that dangerous?”

The soccer players played on, and “the referees and players seemed almost completely unfazed,” Walker said.

“The video only captures part of it — the dust devil was actually on the ground for 1–2 minutes in total.“

“Dust devils are pretty common and most occur under calm and sunny conditions,” Globe meteorologist Ken Mahan said, adding that they form when “the high sun angle warms up one part of the ground faster than the surrounding area. Think of a large parking lot surrounded by grass, covered by trees.”

The resulting pockets of air rise rapidly, leaving a low-pressure area in the center, which “pulls in surrounding air that can spiral inward and create a vortex in the right environment,” according to Bryce Williams, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Norton. “They are quite common, especially in open, flat areas during the warmer months.”

Most dust devils, he said, usually end up around 50 feet wide or less, but some can double that,” he said, and are on average 500 to 1,000 feet tall. “The winds are exceptionally localized and, while mostly harmless, can get as strong as 70 or 80 mph at times, lasting for a few minutes to about 10 minutes.” But those more powerful winds are rare, especially in the Northeast, Mahan said.

Although most of the time dust devils are more spectacle than threat, Williams said people should still steer clear of one if they do see one nearby.

“Although smaller than tornadoes and forming in a completely different way, dust devils can still be destructive, sometimes lifting debris into the air, creating dangerous projectiles,“ he said.

Mahan said they look dramatic, but they “can’t be warned” because they’re too small to be detected by weather radar. Mahan likened them to the “cousin to the spinning leaf mini-tornadoes we see in the fall.”

“Oftentimes, these remain invisible, but when they pass over a source of dust or dirt, like a ballfield, they become visible,” Williams noted.

It’s safe to say no red card was issued to the dust devil as it tried to stop Sunday’s soccer game.

Carlos Muñoz can be reached at carlos.munoz@globe.com. Follow him @ReadCarlos and on Instagram @Carlosbrknews.