This Strange Scar Etched Into The Australian Outback Was Caused By A Tornado
Across the Nullarbor Plain of the Australian outback, there is a strange scar etched into the flat, arid landscape. A team of researchers recently reviewed satellite imagery of the area and realized that the scar was created by a huge tornado that no one knew about until now.
Tornadoes, or twisters, are known to be a threat in the United States and other places, but they happen in Australia as well.
They have occurred on every continent except for Antarctica. They are most common in the Great Plains region of the U.S. and in the northeast of India.
Tornadoes are rapidly spinning columns of air that come from thunderstorms and can cause extensive damage on the ground—demolishing buildings, uprooting trees, and launching debris across large distances.
In Australia, the earliest observed tornado took place in 1795 in the suburbs of Sydney, but it wasn’t until the late 1800s that the occurrence of a tornado was scientifically confirmed in the continent.
The recent finding of the tornado scar stretches across the Western Australia-South Australia border. Twisters are not common there.
This is an example of how extreme weather can happen anywhere on our planet, even when no one is around to witness it.
The team compared satellite imagery of the site over several years to determine that the twister occurred sometime between November 16, 2022, and November 18, 2022.
Alongside the scar were blue circular patterns that represented pools of water associated with heavy rain. The scar was 6.84 miles long and up to 820 feet wide, with wind speeds exceeding 124 miles per hour.
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“It bears striking patterns called ‘cycloidal marks,’ formed by tornado suction vortexes,” said Matej Lipar, the lead author of the study and a researcher at Curtin University in Australia.
“This suggests the tornado was no ordinary storm but in the strong F2 or F3 category, spinning with destructive winds.”
It likely lasted between seven and 13 minutes. The scar’s features indicate that the tornado’s winds were moving in a clockwise direction.
The researchers think the tornado moved from west to east, which is consistent with a strong cold front that swept through the region at the time.
Since the Nullarbor Plain is barren and almost treeless, the marks caused by the twister were still visible on the ground and in satellite images in spring 2023, about 18 months after the event. Vegetation grows slowly within the dry landscape, so the scar has not yet been covered up.
The tornado was not previously recorded because it happened in an unpopulated area and did not cause damage to any homes or towns.
The discovery shows just how powerful and unpredictable nature can be. It has the ability to reshape the Earth’s surface without us knowing.
The study was published in the Journal of Southern Hemisphere Earth Systems Science.
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