A strong little dust devil on water? Not a "pool devil" at all.

People describe pool devils as the V's that race across the surface of a pool of water without a visible cause.
This was a turbulent whirlpool about a foot and a half in diameter with a wake of about three feet long and half that wide.

Me and a friend were fishing on this river, and we found a spot that stuck out like a very small triangle or arrow of baseball sized rocks from the bank into the river, just big enough for us both to stand on, with curved banks on either side.

I noticed and immediately pointed out the whirlpool about 15 feet away, coming at us at probably 2-4 feet per second, moving upriver, me thinking it was a school of fish doing something weird. We hadn't caught a single fish in the past 3 nights we've gone out, so I was vigilant.

It followed the "]" curve of the bank, with us being on the point.
It passed/went around us less than a pole's length from "shore," following the contours of the bank, where the water was less than knee-height, and we could see there weren't any fish.

It went another 20 or so feet, until it met a part that stuck out a little , which was taller than the area we were standing on, where the whirlpool stopped, and what I'm presuming was the wind jumped up the mud bank into a bush, clearly shaking it, and that's the last we saw.

We've both experienced tornadoes in other states, and countless dust devils everywhere we've lived, but this completely baffled us. All the waterspout footage I can come across involves lots of vapor in the air, but there was none.

I'm sure it's possible for the wind to concentrate in such a small area/steer itself like that, but we'd never seen or heard about anything like it in our lives, and I'm wondering if anybody here has some other explanation for it...

Thanks.




[edit on 26-5-2009 by alaskan]

perhaps the vortex was in the water rather than in the air, i've seen small whirl pools in water before, none quite so big mind you and not flowing upstream. they often start in the lee of an obstacle in the current.

I thought about that too. I've seen a million little whirlpools, but none moving at such speed/upstream/onto land.

We were wading around in the water for a while later and there were a few spots that were ice cold while others were nice and comfortable, and some very warm from the sun, but I can't really see how that would affect the grass on the bank.