At least two dust devils spun up in our community on Sunday, right in the middle of what was otherwise a gorgeous day. To be clear, dust devils are not tornadoes. Unlike tornadoes that form in the air from the base of a thunderstorm cloud and extend downward toward the Earth, dust devils spin upward from the surface. Though tornadoes can form any time of the day or night, they require showers and thunderstorms to form. Dust devils are really only an afternoon phenomenon, and really only super sunny and quiet afternoons with no rain or clouds. Dust devils are most noticeable when they whip up over areas with loose materials on the ground. This makes them most visible when they happen on or near dirt roads, construction sites and baseball fields (all places where they're most frequently spotted).Though dust devils don't cause major structural damage to buildings like a tornado can, if they roll through your backyard or you stumble across one when you're outside, you'll certainly notice it. Since they often happen on sunny days with no other clouds in the sky, they can be very surprising. Given that they are most common on days with little to no wind, a dust devil might be the only weather event other than sunshine to happen during an entire day!Why is it that dust devils whip on days when things are so quiet? It's because of what spawns them. Dust devils develop during days of stable and calm weather with lots of sunshine. As the sun's energy beats down on the Earth, it heats it up. Seeing as warm air is less dense than cooler air, bubbles of warmer air rise and form into small areas of low pressure in the atmosphere. Because Earth is spinning, any area of lower pressure (whether it's from a harmless dust devil or a Category 5 hurricane) will encourage air to spin clockwise. As the rising air of a developing dust devil moves upward, it spins. This pulls air from around it inward. If little pieces of debris like dirt are around, they go along for the ride as the increasingly tight wind gradient puts on a show.Dust devils don't normally last very long, and on days where there's little to no wind around them, they can, in some cases, remain totally stationary!Eventually, cooler and more stable air gets pulled into the dust devil, correcting out the temperature imbalance that sparked the whirl of wind, and it falls apart.Snap a photo of a dust devil? We'd love to show it on TV! Send it to the weather team at WBBHNewsWeather@hearst.com.