Dust Devil Simulator (2D)

This top-down 2D simulator models a dust devil as a convective vortex: raising the ground-to-air temperature difference drives a stronger buoyant updraft, while dialing in ambient wind shear supplies the horizontal vorticity that the rising thermal tilts and stretches into a spinning column, exactly as real dust devils form over sun-baked desert. A Rankine-vortex core spins up dust and debris while live readouts track the updraft speed, tangential core velocity, cyclostrophic core pressure deficit and rotation period — and, true to the physics, too little or too much wind shear keeps the vortex from ever organizing.