Haboobs are powerful dust storms that form when a thunderstorm collapses. The collected air is either blown out in powerful gusts, or the air cools and falls rapidly to the surface in a microburst. The strong winds it releases are pushed in front of the storm, and pick up dust and debris to create a wall thousands of feet high and miles across. Light pillar: Long pillars of multicolored light streaking the sky, light pillars are a common effect that can be found all over the world. They come from tiny crystals of ice in the atmosphere. Ice is very thin, shaped like plates with hexagonal faces. When ice drifts down through the air, it falls close to horizontally. When light hits the wider top and bottom sides of each crystal, it bounces around and reflects off yet more crystals. That means we get these vertically stacked mirrors floating in the atmosphere. The light hitting it gets reflected vertically and becomes a radiant column in the sky. Waterspouts: Appearing as tornadoes of water, waterspouts are an eye-catching small-scale phenomena. They can simply be tornadoes that moved from land to bodies of water, but oftentimes they form in fair weather and cause little harm. Unsuspecting marine life can get sucked up with the water and then dumped over land. Waterspouts are responsible for all those incidents of raining fish and frogs! Thanks to the National Weather Service for sharing this video.
