Finding search terms for a scene in mind
Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2018 8:04 pm
I've had a particularly vivid memory of a loosely meteorological scene that I witnessed, but I've been having trouble finding the terms to search for more examples like it.
It was a sunny April afternoon several years ago; the winds were either calm or light and variable. While waiting for a bus, I was watching an empty lot strewn with tiny flower petals. Occasionally, tiny whirlwinds would form on the asphalt, rotating in either direction and carrying petals as they went along, and eventually dissipating when they reached the edge of the lot, or on their own. (When I say tiny, I really do mean tiny: these whirlwinds were short and squat, definitely no larger than a foot in any direction, and probably no larger than six inches in height, at least for the visible portion denoted by lofted flower petals.)
I do know that what I am looking for involves convection and vorticity, but what I am finding instead (when searching for videos of simulations) are videos of side views of convection, thick 3D convection, vorticity from turbulence (which decays), and localized heat sources, when what I am really looking for is a top-down 2D or narrow 3D view with a globalized heat source. Additionally, the whirlwinds in the non-simulated videos are all too big.
Are there any better search terms that I should be using? (This would help when the storm-tracking gets to be a little too slow for my tastes.)
It was a sunny April afternoon several years ago; the winds were either calm or light and variable. While waiting for a bus, I was watching an empty lot strewn with tiny flower petals. Occasionally, tiny whirlwinds would form on the asphalt, rotating in either direction and carrying petals as they went along, and eventually dissipating when they reached the edge of the lot, or on their own. (When I say tiny, I really do mean tiny: these whirlwinds were short and squat, definitely no larger than a foot in any direction, and probably no larger than six inches in height, at least for the visible portion denoted by lofted flower petals.)
I do know that what I am looking for involves convection and vorticity, but what I am finding instead (when searching for videos of simulations) are videos of side views of convection, thick 3D convection, vorticity from turbulence (which decays), and localized heat sources, when what I am really looking for is a top-down 2D or narrow 3D view with a globalized heat source. Additionally, the whirlwinds in the non-simulated videos are all too big.
Are there any better search terms that I should be using? (This would help when the storm-tracking gets to be a little too slow for my tastes.)
