On 02/08/2012 09:48, Martin Rowley wrote:
On Wed, 01 Aug 2012 22:42:30 +0100, Metman2012 wrote:

A friend of mine experienced a very strong dust devil (or something
similar). It was on Wednesday 25th of July at about 2.0pm. It happened
in a field near the A 27 near to The Longman at what used to be
Longman's Nurseries about three miles outside Eastbourne.
The sky was clear blue. Two big plastic tubs were taken right across
the
field and rubbish swirled around high in the sky. rest snipped

... witnessed one of these back in the early 1980s in Finningley village
(I was stationed at RAF Finningley & we lived in the village); my wife
and I were helping out at the local village fête and it was a fine day
with shallow Cu hum - plenty of blue sky, a gentle (F3,ocnl F4) wind
from WSW (in which direction lay the aforementioned airfield - a vast
expanse of short-mown grass and lots of concrete/tarmac).

The field being used for the fête was directly downwind of the airfield
with little or no physical barrier to anything coming along from that
direction (the hedges were either non-existent or kept cut deliberately
low to aid security).

We had just got the stalls set up, covered, laid out etc., when I became
aware of a swirl of dust approaching from the airfield - it crossed
directly over the fête area - several tables completely over-turned,
many others having contents thrown aside and causing no little angst!
Fortunately, within 90 seconds, it had gone, we all dusted ourselves
down and re-set the stalls. I should think that the wind achieved at
least F7 for a short time.

Strong surface heating - steep lapse rate in the lowest tens of feet -
and neutral stability above (or the energy tends to get dispersed
vertically without causing other than a 'normal' gust).

I think I wrote it up in a 'Weather' at the time, but can't remember now
- and they've all gone unfortunately.

Martin.


Members of the Royal Met Soc can now access scanned copies of Weather
all the way back to 1946. As I recall it was necessary to re-register on
the Royal Met Soc website and after that it was into pure nostalgia.

--
George in Epping
www.eppingweather.co.uk
www.winter1947.co.uk