Slow dust devil lifts plastic sheets off of a strawberry field

[Video Link] Gever Tulley says: "This might just be the most beautiful piece of collaboration between nature and industrial agriculture that I have ever seen."

The video gets much better after the first 30 seconds. It reminded me of the transcendental plastic bag scene in American Beauty.

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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jackie31337

It seems amazingly gentle, just slowly revolving like that, but it still has to be pretty powerful to lift those plastic sheets (which are probably heavier than they look).
Tokay

That almost looks like magic. The fabric must be so light to be lifted by such a slowly revolving thermal. Beautiful…
jmdaly

walking into a forming tornado no matter how seemingly benign is never ever smart, pretty though yes.
- OldRipbeak
  
  It’s highly unlikely that this is a forming tornado. Tornadoes are typically spawned by supercell thunderstorms and are often accompanied by high winds, heavy rain, and lightning. The dust devil in this video is just that: a dust devil that just ruined some farmer’s day. ;)
- emmdeeaych
  
  Tornadoes are formed by rotating storm clouds, of which there are none in this video.
Anonymous

If you truly want to experience this video, watch it while playing the N. Korean My Kindergarten teacher song.
JayConverse

Top THAT, Cristo!
Snig

I wonder how many of us have walked next to a similar wind phenomenon and didn’t know it was there as there was no sheeting to illuminate it.
Anonymous

god hates plastic farming
Editz

There’s only one cut of music for flying plastic:

http://www.tubedubber.com/#AxRT60-kw78:lm5ZtxIFOzg:0:100:0:0:true
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Editz,
  
  URL shorteners are deprecated. Your comments don’t go through when you use them.
  - Editz
    
    Why’s that? I don’t see anything in the policy other than 75+ character URLs should be masked.
Alan

If Salvador Dali choreographed a ballet, it’d look like that.
Anonymous

Symbiote and Ipo: On the other hand, if those acres of white sheets might be a very good thing: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/in-a-climate-quest-the-roof-as-white-knight/
Anonymous

Thank you, I loved this so unique and beautiful, I want to have this on a large screen with the room dark and Classical music, maybe you could enter this in an art festival or something…
youdiejoe

Sometimes there’s so many strawberries in the world you feel like you can’t eat them all, like your heart’s going to cave in.
Dave Faris

Too slow; Didn’t care.
Jake0748

Holy Crap! Amazing!

How dopey was the cameraman to walk that close to the flying plastic pieces though. Was he hoping fro a trip to Oz?
Brian Nemo

This is absolutely beautiful. It something that you could never anticipate or control, or recreate, yet are lucky enough to witness and be a small part of. Really love this. Real thanks to Gever and Mark on this. Thanks.
Doran

It was quite lovely. I couldn’t help though thinking of the farmer eventually coming out and saying “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
Anonymous

I cued it to :30, turned off the sound, then started it and Strawberry Fields Forever at the same time. It actually syncs pretty well, especially at the 3:50 mark when the guitars kick in.
tsm_sf

Here’s your soundtrack

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_Y6d2hpkDo

(Apoptygma Berzerk – Everything We Know Is Wrong)
The Hamster King

Next, a house of cards caving in. Then someone being buried alive. Then, fireworks!
PallidaMors

My (somewhat) minor critique is that for half of the movie I wanted to know why strawberry plants were filling half the frame, instead of that incredibly cool column of awesomeness. Beyond that, what a neat thing to not only witness, but capture on camera.
Anonymous

I accidentally put Catch 22 – Musetta ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxRT60-kw78 – first time listening to it) to play while watching it and thought it matched perfectly.

The video per se is beautiful, but lacks a soundtrack, in my opinion that’s the one.
doingsitups

Mesmerising, thanks for the post! And for the person who shot it too. It just look so surreal, at the end the strong wind sound as he went closer to the center, that was nice.
mamayama

Gorgeous, but dangerous. The cameraman was foolhardy walking that close at the end; an errant drift of plastic could’ve wound him up very quickly, wrapping him a tightly bound, possibly hermetically sealed cocoon. He dodged that bullet, but I hope anybody who might copy his camerawork stays at a safe distance…

I was blissfully imagining the Blue Danube Waltz as the soundtrack, til he got too close and my inner orchestra faltered while the conductor yelled, “Get AWAY from that, you idiot!!”
rikomatic

Amazing!

Where is the Double Rainbow guy for commentary when we need him?
Anonymous

that. was. AWESOME! I could have watched that all day.
Anonymous

“No strawberries were harmed during the making of this film”
darren

> I cued it to :30, turned off the sound, then started it and Strawberry Fields
> Forever at the same time. It actually syncs pretty well

It also syncs up well with Tenacious D’s “Swirling Plastic From Hell”.
michael holloway

WOW.
desprez

Sometimes you see things in real life, whether driving down the road, or like this video, and you think, “If I saw this in a game or a movie I’d totally dismiss it as not realistic enough.”
- jackie31337
  
  and you think, “If I saw this in a game or a movie I’d totally dismiss it as not realistic enough.”
  
  Much like the comments for the post about Video of a massive storm approaching a beach in Finland
Muse

Absolutely transcendent! Yes it immediately made me think of the American Beauty scene as well. My vote for the soundtrack is L’origine nascosta
caipirina

My first thought was some nice waltz (chopin maybe) … and then my second thought was unfortunatelly Jaggety Sax … Damn you Benny Hill
Ipo

Beautiful!

I think it was the farmer who filmed this.
The camera man says, in Austrian*, a flavor of German, :”Now it takes the entire next fleece, that can’t be true!” and tells it to “git outta here”, “Geh, schleich di!”. That also explains while the cameras focus is much on the strawberries, it”s the filmers focus. He clearly is invested, and while amazed, upset.

What upsets me is the heavy use of plastics in agriculture.
Here’s a good example:
http://tinyurl.com/6gemb9u

*Yes, there are no kangaroos in the alps.
damiro

It is beautiful. I’m just wondering if the tarp was in place to cover a volatile chemical pesticide that was then carried into town.
Anonymous

Oh. excellent raw video.
http://greatpicx.com/a-tornado
platinum

What a lovely sugar plum fairy! http://youtubedoubler.com/ldAn
Ipo

Beautiful!

I think it was the farmer who filmed this.
The camera man says, in Austrian*, a flavor of German, :”Now it takes the entire next fleece, that can’t be true!” and tells it to “git outta here”, “Geh, schleich di!”. That also explains while the cameras focus is much on the strawberries, it”s the filmers focus. He clearly is invested, and while amazed, upset.

What upsets me is the heavy use of plastics in agriculture.
Here’s a good example:
http://www.grid.unep.ch/activities/global_change/atlas/images/espagne.jpg

*Yes, there are no kangaroos in the alps.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Yes, your comment was commented out because of the URL shortener. Your second comment was commented out because you used the name of the URL shortener when you asked if that was the reason.
- narddogz
  
  Austrian you say?
  
  Julie Andrews spinning with the plastic would be the icing on the cake!
jocoska

These are the real strawberry fields. Like forever…
http://youtubedoubler.com/?video1=http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DAxRT60-kw78&start1=00&video2=http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DS7uBrx5aJ20&start2=15&authorName=
Ipo

My post originally continued with:
What upsets me is the heavy use of plastics in agriculture.
I tried to link to a pair of satellite images of Almeria, Spain for a shocking show and tell.
Alas, I failed. I can’t figure out if policy or a technical issue prevented my link. If you care to, do a GIS of the underlined words.
- Symbiote
  
  Almeria, Spain.
  
  I see what you mean…
- Anonymous
  
  i too was focused on ‘why so much plastic’ and what happens to it when the harvest is done? incredibly cool dance but…thanks.
DollSubtle

A tornado? In a no-fly zone? These strawberries need more protection.
Michael Smith

It looks like absolutely fantastic thermalling conditions. I reckon you could launch a paraglider just standing on the ground and fly for hours.
Paul Coleman

It looks to me like that is Agribon (or something like it). It’s basically a fabric spun from polypropylene (yes plastic), that is used as a frost protection blanket or insect protection. As an organic farmer, I can tell you that this is a much more sustainable way of keeping bugs from destroying my crops than chemical sprays. I also reuse what is in decent enough shape to re-use from year to year. I expect he’s upset because it isn’t that cheap and if he’s using it for either he’s going to have to salvage/untangle it and hand roll it back out. That doesn’t look fun.

The above information aside, that was absolutely beautiful to watch.