Legend of the Dust Devils
By
Dus T. Wrangler

"Far out on the desert to the north dustspouts rose wobbling and augered the earth and some said they'd heard of pilgrims borne aloft like dervishes in those mindless coils to be dropped broken and bleeding upon the desert again and there perhaps to watch the thing that had destroyed them lurch onward like some drunken djinn and resolve itself once more into the elements from which it sprang. Out of that whirlwind no voice spoke and the pilgrim lying in his broken bones may cry out and in his anguish he may rage, but rage at what? And if the dried and blackened shell of him is found among the sands by travelers to come yet who can discover the engine of his ruin?"
-Cormac McCarthy-

What is it about those spiraling West Texas anomalies that capture our imaginations, sucking us into that swirling mass of bits and pieces of everyday life, assuming some supernatural life of its own. Perhaps it is the physical manifestation of the wind and dust combined. Those two elements of West Texas that have proven uncontrollable by a group of people who have attempted to control everything around them.

"Out of that whirlwind no voice spoke" _
-Cormac McCarthy-

In legend, the dust devils, or polvo diablo as the Spanish called them have long been considered magical beings. The Comanches held a healthy respect for the ju'hcup or winddust, as they called it, having witnessed flesh literally being blasted from bones in the wake of a Llano spring. The Hopis and Zunis viewed a dust devil as a deity. Whirlwind Old Man would burst forth from the third world, "caught up in the dust [and would hold] it in his whirl all day long". Even Taknokwunui, the spirit who controlled the weather could not hold sway over Whirlwind Old Man. Nevada's Gosiute Indians believe they were born of the wind-swirled dust, and that whirlwinds embody their ancestors' spirits. In the Arab legends of the deserts, a djinni, or magical being , often takes the form of a dust devil or whirlwind.
Dust Devils certainly seem like some magical entity, but in reality, they are rotating columns of air that can occur in hot regions around the world. Also called willy-nillys in Australia, Dust Devils are the "smallest of the world's rotating, convection-fed storms". The largest convection-fed storm is a tornado.
Dust Devils often form in the spring and summer months. The sun heats the ground surface as much as 80 degrees hotter than the air. Soon a bubble of this extremely hot and now less dense air floats upward. More hot surface air rushes in to take its place, developing a thermal, or rising stream of hot air, habitat for soaring hawks and vultures. Once spinning, it sucks in more hot air and whirls faster. The warm air from the ground that rushes to fill the vacancy within the cone of the dust devil will make it spin faster and faster. The spinning column remains invisible until it vacuums up surface debris such as dry soil, tumbleweeds, and trash.
The dances of the dust devil can lasts from a few minutes to several hours. Dust devils eventually burn themselves out when the air pressure within the cone rises to the pressure of the surrounding environment. Dust devils can be 10 meters to 20 meters in diameter and 1,000 meters (a kilometer or six-tenth of a mile) high. They can lift dust and debris up to a few hundred meters into the air. Although not considered dangerous, dust devils can become hazardous to light aircraft, and other light vehicles. The sizzling summer temperatures of the West's hottest, lowest elevation places like Death Valley, California, or the desert around Phoenix, Arizona, sometimes spawn giant dust devils that tower a half-mile high and pack winds whirling as fast as 90 miles per hour. These storms are capable of tearing off roofs and collapsing walls.
Although easily explained away by meteorologists, when one is caught up in the stinging embrace of a dust devil, they seem less a natural phenomenon, than bedeviled spirits of the Llano. Swirling spirits which 'whooshes in wrapped in a whirling cloak of dust". Spirits "which frayed the nerves of pioneer women and reddened cowboy's eyes". Spirits of Lubbock who refuse to be tamed by the passing of time or change.

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