‘It was like Armageddon,’ witness says of dust devil

What was apparently a mighty dust devil shot up Lewes Boulevard Thursday afternoon, to the amazement of children and adults who witnessed it.

What was apparently a mighty dust devil shot up Lewes Boulevard Thursday afternoon, to the amazement of children and adults who witnessed it.

“It was awesome,” Heidi Spinks, an early child educator with Care-A-Lot Daycare, told the Star shortly after witnessing the robust mass of swirling air at 4 p.m.

Spinks and two other supervisors were outside their day care with about a 12 children when they heard the wind pick up.

“We looked up, and at first, we thought it was a kite way up,” she said. “But the longer we looked at it, we realized it was a probably a (portable cloth) garage cover.”

Spinks said they watched as it moved up Lewes. As it picked up a sign at the Riverdale Plaza, she and two other supervisors gathered the kids and sheltered them them up against a concrete wall.

“It is the first time I have ever seen a dust devil of that magnitude in Whitehorse,” she said, adding she is convinced it had the strength to lift a child.

The supervisors were more concerned at the time about the danger of flying debris, she said.

Spinks didn’t see a distinct funnel shape. However, one of the moms who had arrived to pick up her child said she saw a funnel shape from her car in the parking lot, but that it came up from the ground, not down from the sky.

Meteorologist Gabor Friscka said this morning the defining difference between dust devils and tornadoes is their origin.

Dust devils originate on the ground where pockets of warmer temperatures begin to rise and mix with pockets of cooler temperatures, causing the spiralling action as they rise, he explained.

“The important thing is that they originate on the ground,” he said from his Environment Canada office in Kelowna, B.C.

Friscka explained that tornadoes, on the other hand, originate in the clouds when rising warm air mixes with cooler air above and causes wind sheers, which provide the fuel for an already unstable air mass.

“You need the wind sheers and the instability. But I don’t think there’s ever been a report of a tornado in the Yukon,” he said.

Dust devils, he said, can get very strong, adding that two or three times a year he’ll receive photographs from eyewitnesses of particularly strong dust devils.

Friscka said the dry air coming off the mountains in the Yukon makes for poor tornado conditions. Moisture in the air, he said, is what drives the often-deadly twisters.

“It is not like the deep south in the U.S., where you have all this moisture coming off the Gulf of Mexico,” he said. “It is a lot different down there.”

Friscka said if ever there was a tornado, it would likely be quite weak.

Another eyewitness to the yesterday’s spiralling fury said what she witnessed was closer to a tornado than any dust devil she’s ever seen.

Lynn Alfino was in her third-storey apartment on Lewes Boulevard when she was drawn to the window by a thunderous noise coming from outside.

“It was like Armageddon,” she said in a interview after calling the Star to share her experience, and to see if others had called in (none had).

“It sounded like a freight train.”

Alfino said she saw a large and distinct funnel shape that reached high into the sky.

A four-metre- by-four-metre piece of material (likely the portable garage cover) was being tossed around way above tree level, she said.

Alfino watched as it lifted a sign in front of the Riverdale Plaza. It all happened very quickly, in about 15 seconds, she said.

“It went up Lewes, turned and followed the mountains along Alsek and then disintegrated over somewhere near the Chadburn Lake Road.”

Alfino said she never had time to grab her camera, but it’s handy now.

“Thankfully, there were no people in the funnel,” she said, reassuringly joking that she doesn’t drink and what she saw was truly mighty.

“Thankfully, there was no animals in the funnel. But there could have been, given its strength.”

Back in the 1990s, a whirling wind picked up an entire commercial greenhouse next to Bethany Pentecostal Tabernacle on the Alaska Highway near Two Mile Hill and moved it several inches. There was ample proof of that incident.