Reports of smoke in California mountains turn out to be dust devil that was caught on camera
Dust devils are vortices created by strong surface heating. The National Weather Service says they are usually spotted between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., when the sun is most intense.
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HIDDEN VALLEY, Calif. – A dust devil in the mountains north of Los Angeles caused quite the scare Wednesday as witnesses mistook the sight for a column of smoke from a wildfire.
CAL FIRE said firefighters responded to the reports of smoke in the Hidden Valley area but were not able to find a fire.
A review of video from a system of over 1,000 cameras across the Golden State captured the phenomenon and confirmed that what residents witnessed was a dust devil.
The vortex was not on the ground long, and it appeared to form in a rural area of the Santa Monica Mountains.
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A network of over 1,000 cameras designed to alert agencies to smoke caught a unique sight on Wednesday – a dust devil moving through the Santa Monica Mountains.
(FOX Weather)
Dust devils can be confused with tornadoes but are much weaker. They form from surface heating and not thunderstorm activity like tornadoes.
According to the National Weather Service, dust devils are usually spotted between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. when the sun is most intense.
Typically, the events only tower about 500 to 1,000 feet into the sky and only last a few minutes before they dissipate.
There were no other reported sightings of the dust devil in the mountains Wednesday.
If the sighting had been actual smoke, the existence of a wildfire would not have been unusual for late June.
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California is approaching the peak of its annual fire season, which usually starts in the late spring and continues through the fall.
(FOX Weather)
A series of atmospheric river events over the winter and spring all but erased the state’s short-term drought, which could continue to play a role in how active the fire season becomes.
As of late June, about 7,600 acres have burned in the state, which usually averages about 28,000 acres destroyed through the first half of the year, according to CAL FIRE.
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Even though the incident was a false alarm, firefighters still thanked citizens for alerting them to the potential of what could have been a serious problem.
"We all were happy to learn that there was no fire, and we thank the concerned citizens for their diligence in reporting it to authorities," CAL FIRE posted on Twitter.
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