TIGARD, Ore. — A gustnado at a kids' baseball game in Tigard damaged a dugout and sent players and coaches running to safety Saturday evening.
"A gustnado is a small whirlwind which forms as an eddy in thunderstorm or shower outflows," the National Weather Service's (NWS) Portland office tweeted.
The event happened shortly after 6 p.m. Saturday at Cook Park off Southwest 92nd Avenue. A video captured by coach Jared Ravich shows the whirlwind picking up the roof of a dugout and sending it flying in the air. Coaches and kids flinch and start to take cover. After becoming airborne, the roof comes crashing into the ground and breaks into pieces. No one was injured.
Ravich said he started seeing winds pick up shortly after the game was over.
Fortunately, the game had ended early, the first time this season one had done so. A big reason it ended early was because of the pitcher they had in the game.
"This kid came in, pitched the sixth inning and struck out the side. If he didn’t strike out the side and end the game early, there would have been kids out there when all of the wind took off," said Ravich.
People who initially watched the video thought that it may have been a tornado because of the circular motion of wind.
In a Twitter thread, NWS Portland said that gustnados are not tornadoes since they "do not connect with any cloud-base rotation."
"This means we can rule out a tornado and a landspout, and we are left with a dust devil or a gustnado."
Dust devils typically occur on hot, dry, sunny days in the summertime, NWS Portland said.
"You need differential heating. Today was not a hot, dry, sunny day. We can rule out dust devil and we are left with our last option, a gustnado."