January 1, 2011 Barreal (San Juan) Argentina

This video is from a mountain valley near the town of Barreal, Argentina in the San Juan Province. The evevation at this site is around 6,000 ft with mountain peaks of 14-18,000 ft surrounding the valley.

I am interested to hear opinions about the classification of the vorticies in the clip.

Glossary of Meteorology:

Dust Devil—A well-developed dust whirl; a small but vigorous whirlwind, usually of short duration, rendered visible by dust, sand, and debris picked up from the ground.

Tornado -- 1. A violently rotating column of air, in contact with the ground, either pendant from a cumuliform cloud or underneath a cumuliform cloud, and often (but not always) visible as a funnel cloud.

So what do you think? Dust devil? Landspout (Non-mesocyclone tornado)?

Category:

Science & Technology

[janyxsix]

es el diablo pedazo de tontos!,

[809380]

Hi, nice video. good idea to stop your car to film this dust devil, bye bye.

[tomaplanas]

hello, what you saw is a very common phenomenon in the area, is caused by changes in wind direction, which in this area is very strong. that happens everywhere, you see it because at the side of the road is the"pampa del leoncito or barreal blanco" in which land rises and so you see it. that is very common.

i now that phenomenon because i go to barreal every month to do kite buggy on the land...

salu20s

[lucas99cazatormentas]

nice !

[EzequielSimonSJ]

Exelent dust-devil video, of my province!

[mroldnewbie]

I don't know much about this, but it does look like it has a funnel. It's impossible to see whether there's a funnel going down from the clouds. Since vaughanweather says it's a dust devil, it probably is. It's a pretty cool looking devil, though.

[vaughanweather]

Definitely looks like a dust devil, there was probably a thermal trough of some sort pushed through and given the elevation + strong surface heating of the environment near surface lapse rates were likely in the 10C/km range.

The occurrence of nearby cumulus was also likely a byproduct of the trof pushing through, you will note how clear it is in one direction versus the other. It's hard to tell if there was any connection or relation to the cloud from the video but I highly doubt it.

[Dvoracekmara]

Hello! Great storm capture!!!

[XxLaLocaLindaxX]

Hi! , I love to enjoy the scenery of my province, I hope the have had a great time! :)