Researchers Identify Cause of Strange Scar in Australian Outback

A strange set of marks in the Australian outback is actually the step of a giant twister that has not been seen until now, according to a team that recently reviewed satellite images of the marks.

Twisters, or hurricanes, or cars from Kansas to the magical land of Oz—whatever you call them—are small, rapidly rotating columns of air that can wreak havoc on the ground. Tornadoes are most common in the central United States’ Tornado Alley, but have been reported on every continent except Antarctica. The latest discovery is a cycloidal twist on the Western Australia-South Australia border child, where the twists are unusual, and they indicate bad weather happening on our planet—even if no one is going to see it.

The twister occurred between November 16, 2022 and November 18, 2022, based on available satellite imagery. Marks suggest the weather event was 6.84 miles long (11 kilometers) and up to 820 feet (250 meters) wide, with wind speeds in excess of 124 miles per hour (200 km/hr). The team’s research describing the weather event was published last week in the Journal of Southern Hemisphere Earth Systems Science.

“It has sharp patterns called ‘cycloidal marks,’ which are formed by tornado suction vortices,” said Matej Lipar, a researcher at Curtin University in Australia and lead author of the study, in The Conversation. strong F2 or F3, surrounding destructive winds.”

Tornadoes descend from thunder clouds. They have been reported in every US state but are most common in the Great Plains, where winds tend to favor tornado formation, but the region becomes warm and humid enough for thunderstorms in the spring. That’s why the storms of Hurricane Milton caught many off guard when the Category 3 storm hit Florida last month; Florida isn’t often known for hurricanes, but the storm brought perfect conditions for twisters to form. This storm eventually spawned at least thirty storms due to the perfect storm of things.

The 2022 Nullarbor Plain was unusual compared to other cyclones in southern Australia. Most of the hurricane events in the area between 1795 and 2014 occurred south of Perth—at the southwestern tip of Australia—and west of Adelaide, in the east. The cyclone recently investigated occurred between the two, about 12.4 miles (20 km) north of the Trans-Australian Railway.

Because the area has little grass, scars from the twister were still visible on satellite and ground images in the spring of 2023, about 18 months after the event. The team believes that the twister was spinning clockwise to the east for 7 to 13 minutes, and moved along a cold front that was sweeping the region at the time.

The event was not previously recorded because it took place in an uninhabited area, so it did not cause damage to any buildings. But finding out about such a violent event in retrospect is kind of scary, and a reminder of the tenacity of Earth’s climate without even human existence.