In an unforgiving landscape of rock and dust beneath a broiling sun, they appear on the horizon. The pale, undulating figures take a serpentine course across a bleak and barren world. And then, with a final spectral whirl, they’re gone. Long a tool of cinematographers to signal inhospitable, sweltering deserts, dust devils are not limited to the hotter corners of our planet. They can occur anywhere that’s dry and sunny enough, and have been recorded from Antarctica to Iceland. All that’s required is enough direct sunlight to heat the ground…
