TUMBLEWEED 'TORNADO' CAUGHT ON CAMERA IN WASHINGTON HIGHWAY
By Rosie
McCall, Newsweek
(dot) com, 7:11am PDT
5/1/2020
The clip was shared by Matt M. McKnight, a Seattle-based journalist with
Crosscut, a nonprofit news site serving the Pacific northwest.
McKnight explained he took the video while traveling along the Washington
240. He said he pulled over when he spotted the incoming tumbleweed on a spot
of road near the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Benton County, Washington.
"Saw this approaching and pulled over along WA-240 a few minutes ago
near Hanford Site," he tweeted.
At the time of writing, the video, posted on Thursday, has racked up more
than 20K likes and 6K retweets, and has been watched more than 504K times.
McKnight later told the Tri-City Herald how he came across what he refers
to as "the tumbleweed devil." He said he was traveling along the
highway when he noticed some tumbleweed "bouncing" along the road.
"Moments later it was a bunch grouped together and I needed to slow
down a bit," he explained. "Then I looked about a hundred yards down
the road and saw a tumbleweed devil forming quickly—so I pulled over to be
safe.”
Even after he pulled over, the tumbleweed headed straight towards him—and
"Bessie," his 1985 VW Vanagon. Both McKnight and Bessie managed to
make it out relatively unscathed with just a few scratches to show for the
incident.
"She appears to be fine with some minor scratches and a whole lot of
tumbleweeds that I needed to clear from the undercarriage," McKnight told the
Tri-City Herald.
"The most nerve wracking part was actual driving out of the pile
that had surround me."
Scott Sistek, Web Meteorologist for KOMO News (Seattle) has published an
explainer on the weather phenomenon. According to Sistek,
"tumbleweed-nado" is not a technical term and the swirling tumbleweed
is not actually a tornado.
"As I teased at the start, this is just a big dust devil whose path
carried it through the rolling tumbleweeds of Eastern Washington," he
explained.
"It's not officially a tornado, or any kind of -nado, but is just an
intense swirl of air caused when you have a column of relatively hot air rising
rapidly and then when air rushes in to replace it can bring rotation..."
While a tumbleweed-nado may not be a real weather phenomenon, firenadoes
are. The fire-tornado hybrid have been spotted in Australia and the U.S. when
wildfire reaches such a high level of intensity that they start to form their
own weather system.
These weather systems can generate firestorms and at their most acute,
tornadoes that look like they are made of flames.
::::
HANFORD 'TUMBLEWEED TORNATO' ENGULFS HIGHWAY 240 DRIVER
By Kristin M. Kraemer, Tri-City Herald, April 30, 2020 07:08 pm
Video clip
info: While driving northbound on WA-240 past the Hanford Nuclear site, Matt
McKnight happened upon a tumbleweed tornado. By Matt M. McKnight/Crosscut.com
A
Seattle-based visual journalist captured a devil of a “tumbleweed tornado”
while on assignment Thursday in Eastern Washington.
Matt M.
McKnight was driving north on Highway 240 near the Hanford Nuclear Reservation
when he noticed “a few scattered tumbleweeds bouncing along the road.”
“Moments
later it was a bunch grouped together and I needed to slow down a bit,”
McKnight told the Tri-City Herald. “Then I looked about a hundred yards down
the road and saw a tumbleweed devil forming quickly — so I pulled over to be
safe.”
McKnight
works for Crosscut, an independent, nonprofit news site covering the Pacific
Northwest.
He posted an
11-second video to his Twitter account at 3:46 p.m. Thursday, just minutes
after the tumbleweed devil created by strong winds went directly into “Bessie,”
his 1985 VW Vanagon.
“Hey y’all
I’m fortunate enough to travel Washington on assignments for @Crosscut/@KCTS9
when I get to find craziness like this randomly,” McKnight said in a tweet. The
video had nearly 165,000 views by Thursday evening.
McKnight
told the Herald that the van allows him to self-isolate while on overnight
trips during the coronavirus pandemic.
He said
Bessie appears to be fine with some minor scratches and “a whole lot of
tumbleweeds that I needed to clear from the undercarriage.”
“The most
nerve-wracking part was actually driving out of the pile that had surrounded
me,” he added.
