Chase Reports Summer 2002/03 10/01/03 27/12/02 22/11/02 21/11/02 Summer 2001/02 06/01/02 - Dust Storm Chase Winter 2001 03/05/01 - A few funnels Winter 2000 Winter - Some nice CB's 20/06/00 - Winter chase, 3 Tornadoes Summer 1999/2000 20/02/00 - Thundery showers in Perth Jan 4-14, 2000 Dust Devil Paradise 24/12/99 - Christmas Eve Chase 29/02/99 - Chase North East, nice storm with gust front 11th,12th,13th/12/99 - Chase's to Perth coast, Bindoon & Toodyay 02/11/99 - Nice chase to the wheatbelt with numerous CB's & some great mammatus Winter 1999 10/06/99 - Perth Coast Summer 1998/1999 27/01/98 - Great Dust Devil 28/11/98 - Dowerin Tornado & chase Winter 1997/1998 17/04/98 - I chased & saw my first tornado, 2 supercells an awesome wallcloud & 1-2 inch hail Winter 1997 05/09/97 - 5 tornadoes in WA in 36 hours Summer 1996/1997 24/09/96 - A small funnel! 05/11/97 - Not a bad storm, another funnel New Norcia Chase

All images © Inflow Images

Dust Devil & Dust Storm 27/01/98  

The last 5 months have been very quiet for storms here in WA, so it was a  nice surprise to come accross a Dust Devil and a Dust Storm whilst on a visit to my parents in Victoria.  There are lots of farms which grow wheat in the area.  After harvesting, there is no ground cover to stop the wind from blowing up the dust, so there is always many a willy willy, dust devil, and dust storms to be seen.  I do know that farmers are putting in a concerted effort to minimise this problem, as all their topsoil gets blown away.

 

We were driving along when my brother brother said check out that willy willy.  I looked over and saw a pretty wide willy willy about 300 meters away.  There wasn't much dust in it so i was wondering what he was getting excited about.  A few seconds later I saw what he was really looking at, and it was a great looking dust devil a few meters from the road, which I couldn't see before.  My brother slowed down as i fumbled for my camera.  I couldn't get the automatic focus on the camera to focus, so i quickly switched to manual focus and took a few shots.  By then we were stopped, and i was about to get out of the car to go over to it, when it dissipated.  It was about 4 or 5 metres across at the base and was about 50 meters in height.  It lasted about 40seconds from when I first saw it to when it dissipated, but i don't know how long it had been formed for before i got there.  You might notice than even in the first photo you can see it had started to dissipate at the top.  It was not moving around very much, and i could have easily gone over to it had i been a few minutes earlier. (it would have been extremely dusty.  hee hee).  If you look closely at the 4th photo in the set, you may notice a second dust devil off to the right of the main one.
Further down the road, i also saw another one that was a lot taller, but due to the angle of the shot and the small amount of dust that it had picked up, the photo didn't turn out.  The photos of the first dust devil turned out great though, and it is a pity I didn't arrive earlier to get some more.