A paraglider in Austria recently had a scary encounter with a dust devil. The man was waiting to take off on a paragliding trip when he got a premature start as the dust devil blew in, caught his parachute, and sent him flying into a fence and then a tree. The incident occurred on March 21, 2022, in Stubenberg, Steiermark, Austria. In a 20-second video shared on the YouTube channel ViralHog, we can see the man wearing a parachute when the dust devil suddenly pops out of nowhere and hoists him into the air in a terrifying spiral.
As he is swept away on a frightening ride, he first strikes against a fence, and then over it, into a tree. We can also see a few branches breaking off and falling to the ground when he crashes into the tree.
The paraglider captioned the video, “I was preparing for launching with my paraglider when a dust devil plucked me up and smashed me into the fence, then into a tree. I did not get hurt during this incident.”
So far, the video has been viewed over 4,500 times on YouTube, and many users have even commented on it.
A few users saw the funny side of it.
One of them wrote, “Is it evil that I watched it more than once, and I laughed? On the other hand, I hope he's okay, nothing broken.”
Another said, “Mother nature's way of saying, ‘Time to quit'.”
A third user commented, “First, the wind caught it, and then the tree, too! If it hadn't been for that tree, that thing would have been long gone.”
In another video a few years ago, a dust devil in Fairfield, California, blew over a skate park, ripping apart a roof and spinning a man in the process. The man can be seen dancing twirling in one spot while the dust devil swirled debris around him. It also blew a concession stand's roof off and sent it flying through the air.
According to the National Weather Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a dust devil is a “common wind phenomenon that occurs throughout much of the world”. The National Weather Service adds that these whirlwinds are “dust-filled vortices, created by strong surface heating” and are usually “smaller and less intense than a tornado”.
Dust devils occur “when the ground can warm the air to temperatures well above the temperatures just above the ground”. When the ground heats up sufficiently, a small pocket of air rises quickly through the cooler air above.
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