A Google Maps discovery has blown researchers away.
It's sometimes easy to forget how big the Australian outback is, but with it covering 70% of the Australian continent, and working out at 5.6 million square kilometers, it's over half the size of the entire United States.
Despite boasting a diverse ecosystem including red kangaroos, dingoes, and galahs, most of the outback gets little rain and finds its main source of income through the likes of tourism, agriculture, and mining. Still, fewer than 5% of Australia's population actually lives there.
As you can imagine, there are whole swathes of the outback that look pretty empty on Google Earth, which has made one man's discovery even more baffling.
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In early 2024, a caver was looking at Google Earth images of Australia's Nullarbor Plain and was shocked to see a massive scar carved into the landscape.
Scientists were equally confused by what they saw, but eventually, decided a ferocious tornado had torn a hole in the outback without anyone knowing.
New research shared in the Journal of Southern Hemisphere Earth Systems Science explains how this weather phenomenon would've likely gone unnoticed if not for the eagle-eyed caver, with scientists now able to use data to examine how tornadoes work and might move in the future.
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Matej Lipar from the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Curtin University says that he and his colleagues mapped the scar which lies 20 km north of the Trans-Australian Railway and 90 km east-north-east of a former railway settlement known as Forrest. Comparing satellite imagery over several years, Lipar and the team deduced that the tornado occurred in 2022 between November 16 and November 18.
They then visited the area to take a closer look, determining the tornado scar is 11 km long and somewhere between 160 and 250 metres wide. It boasts the typical 'cycloidal marks' you'd expect from tornado suction vortexes, while it looks like it was a strong F2 or F3 category tornado that reached up to 200 km/h.
Adding that research like this gives researchers valuable insights into tornadoes in remote regions, Lipar says it emphasizes the importance of satellite imagery when looking at weather phenomena. He concluded: "And finally, the results are a stark reminder that extreme weather can strike anywhere, anytime."
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Although tornadoes are typically associated with the Great Plains of America, they've been reported on every continent except Antarctica. This is far from the first tornado to strike Australia, with the first being reported all the way back in the Sydney suburbs in 1795. More recently, seven tornadoes were reported during a storm in September 2016, while a dangerous EF2 tornado claimed one person's life on the Gold Coast in 2023. It's actually predicted that Australia is hit by between 30 and 80 tornadoes every year, so keep your eyes out.