The weekend peace and quiet of McCarren Park in Brooklyn, New York—sometimes dubbed the “hipster beach” by locals—was shattered on Sunday afternoon? by a strange, towering meteorological visitor. And also by the howls of my friend Michael Gambale, who took this video, yelling like the world was fast coming to an end. “It was amazing,” he said. “I had my ‘oh shit, a double rainbow‘ moment.”?
The spiraling, orange tunnel-like phenomenon appears to be a textbook specimen of a “dust devil”, which according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration? definition, is a “small, rapidly rotating wind that is made visible by the dust, dirt or debris it picks up.” It’s not a tornado, which is much more powerful and connected to a cloud, and certainly not as dangerous (though in 1992, an Alburquerque dust devil produced 70 mph winds, equivalent to a typical severe thunderstorm.) Instead, according to NASA, “a dust devil typically forms on a clear day when the ground is heated by the sun, warming the air just above the ground. As heated air near the surface rises quickly through a small pocket of cooler air above it, the air may begin to rotate, if conditions are just right.” And they were.
According to Gambale, who was relaxing in the park with friends, it lasted about a minute, leaving some locals “perplexed”, and others filled with a sense of adventure: “Some dude ran into it, that’s why I said don’t run into it,” Gambale added. “And he did! He just got all dusty. It wasn’t that strong obviously.”
But don’t diss the dust devil by calling it weak or short-lived: “It’s a dirtbag hipster tornado and it’s Brooklyn’s.”
The only other reference I could find to “twister” in McCarren park was of a very different kind: Mass “Twister” performed by a marauding group of Santas for 2009’s Santacon. I like this one much better.
See? Everything exciting happens in Brooklyn.
