Meteorology Windstorm:
A wind that is strong enough to cause at least light damage to trees and buildings and may or may not be accompanied by precipitation. Wind speeds during a windstorm typically exceed 55 km (34 miles) per hour.
Meteorology Whirlwind:
A whirlwind is a small-diameter columnar vortex of rapidly swirling air. A broad spectrum of vortices occurs in the atmosphere, ranging in scale from small eddies that form in the lee of buildings and topographic features to fire storms, waterspouts, and tornadoes.
The generic whirlwind is usually modified to reflect the visible features associated with the whirl; thus there are dust whirls or dust devils, sand whirls or sand pillars, and fire, smoke, snow, and even hay whirls.
Haboobs or Dust and Sandstorms:
Haboobs are intense sand-and-dust storms, carried on winds blowing in summertime in desert regions of the world. Haboobs can create problems for travelers, as well as respiratory problems for those caught in them. Dust seems to consume the air, making visibility low.
Ancient Stories:
During the previous Binary Solar System Crossings, the Ancients tell us of strong, intense, and sustained wind and windstorm events such as Tempests, Storm Wind or Windstorms, Whirlwinds, Cyclones, Hurricanes, and Tornadoes.
The Bible:
Ezekiel's Wheel
Ezekiel 1: 4
"As I looked, behold, a storm wind was coming from the north, a great cloud with fire flashing forth continually and a bright light around it, and in its midst something like glowing metal in the midst of the fire."
Commentary:
The storm wind may have been caused by a gravitational tidal effect or by thermal radiation. The light and specifically the “glowing metal in the midst of the fire” indicates a hot object. Due to their extremely eccentric orbits the fragments were hot, shining and accompanied by a cloud.
Epic of Gilgamesh:
"At the first glow of dawn, an immense black cloud rose on the horizon and crossed the sky. Inside it the storm god Adad was thundering, while Shullat and Hanish, twin gods of destruction, went first, tearing through mountains and valleys. Nergal, the god of pestilence, ripped out the dams of the Great Deep, Ninurta opened the floodgates of heaven, the infernal gods blazed and set the whole land on fire. A deadly silence spread through the sky and what had been bright now turned to darkness. The land was shattered like a clay pot.
All day, ceaselessly, the storm winds blew, the rain fell, then the Flood burst forth, overwhelming the people like war. No one could see through the rain, it fell harder and harder, so thick that you couldn’t see your own hand before your eyes. Even the gods were afraid. The water rose higher and higher until the gods fled to Anu’s palace in the highest heaven. But Anu had shut the gates. The gods cowered by the palace wall, like dogs."
Commentary:
The old Babylonian epic poem Gilgamesh contains a description of the Flood. It predates the account of Genesis.
The combination of fire, devastating wind and falling masses of water can be produced, when a hot planetlike object passes near the Earth. The heat produces the fire and the tidal forces move air and water. Oceans may spill over continents.
Worlds in Collision Excerpts From the Epic of Gilgamesh:
From out the horizon rose a dark cloud and it rushed against the earth; the land was shriveled by the heat of the flames. "Desolation . . . stretched to heaven; all that was bright was turned into darkness. . . . Nor could a brother distinguish his brother. . . . Six days . . . the hurricane, deluge, and tempest continued sweeping the land . . . and all human back to its clay was returned.
"The sky and the earth resounded . . . mountains and hills were moved," says the Midrash. "Loud did the firmament roar, and earth with echo resounded,"
Kolbrin Bible:
MAN:5:3 The Earth was troubled and shook, the hills and mountains moved and rocked. The dark smoke-filled Heavens bowed over Earth, and a great howl came to the ears of living men, borne to them upon the wings of the wind. It was the cry of the Dark Lord, the Master of Dread. Thick clouds of fiery smoke passed before him, and there was an awful hail of hot stones and coals of fire. The Doomshape thundered sharply in the Heavens and shot out bright lightings. The channels of water were turned back unto themselves when the land tilted, and great trees were tossed about and snapped like twigs. Then, a voice like ten thousand trumpets was heard over the wilderness, and before its burning breath, the flames parted. The whole of the land moved, and mountains melted. The sky itself roared like ten thousand lions in agony, and bright arrows of blood sped back and forth across its face. Earth swelled up like bread upon the hearth.
MAN:6:14 The fish of the river died in the polluted waters; worms, insects and reptiles sprang up from the Earth in huge numbers. Great gusts of wind brought swarms of locusts which covered the sky. As the Destroyer flung itself through the Heavens, it blew great gusts of cinders across the face of the land. The gloom of a long night spread a dark mantle of blackness, which extinguished every ray of light. None knew when it was day and when it was night, for the sun cast no shadow.
MAN:6:27 They turned before Noshari and stopped at Shokoth, the place of quarries. They passed the waters of Maha and came by the valley of Pikaroth, northward of Mara. They came up against the waters which blocked their way, and their hearts were in despair. The night was a night of fear and dread, for there was a high moaning above, and black winds from the underworld were loosed, and fire sprang up from the ground. The hearts of the slaves shrank within them, for they knew the wrath of Pharaoh followed them and that there was no way of escape. They hurled abuse on those who led them; strange rites were performed along the shore that night. The slaves disputed among themselves, and there was violence.
MAN:6:31 A whirlwind arose in the East and swept over the encamped hosts. A gale raged all night, and in the red twilit dawn there was a movement of the Earth, the waters receded from the seashore and were rolled back on themselves. There was a strange silence and then, in the gloom, it was seen that the waters had parted, leaving a passage between. The land had risen, but it was disturbed and trembled, the way was not straight or clear. The waters about were as if spun within a bowl, the swampland alone remained undisturbed. From the horn of the Destroyer came a high, shrilling noise which stopped the ears of men.
Purifying Winds and Recovery:
MAN:6:42 Anturah gathered together the remnants of his fighting men and the fighting men who were left in Egypt, and set forth to meet the Children of Darkness who came out of the eastern mountains by way of the wilderness and by way of Yethnobis. They fell upon the stricken land from behind the grey cloud, before the lifting of the darkness and before the coming of the purifying winds.
Worlds in Collision Excerpts:
Chapter 3 The Hurricane
Windstorms were documented by different people from around the world.
"THE SWIFT shifting of the atmosphere under the impact of the gaseous parts of the comet, the drift of air attracted by the body of the comet, and the rush of the atmosphere resulting from inertia when the earth stopped rotating or shifted its poles, all contributed to produce hurricanes of enormous velocity and force and of worldwide dimensions.
Manuscript Troano and other documents of the Mayas describe a cosmic catastrophe during which the ocean fell on the continent, and a terrible hurricane swept the earth. The hurricane broke up and carried away all towns and all forests. Exploding volcanoes, tides sweeping over mountains, and impetuous winds threatened to annihilate humankind, and actually did annihilate many species of animals. The face of the earth changed, mountains collapsed, other mountains grew and rose over the onrushing cataract of water driven from oceanic spaces, numberless rivers lost their beds, and a wild tornado moved through the debris descending from the sky.
The end of the world age was caused by Hurakan, the physical agent that brought darkness and swept away houses and trees and even rocks and mounds of earth. From this name is derived "hurricane," the word we use for a strong wind. Hurakan destroyed the major part of the human race. In the darkness swept by wind, resinous stuff fell from the sky and participated with fire and water in the destruction of the world. For five days, save for the burning naphtha and burning volcanoes, the world was dark, since the sun did not appear.
The theme of a cosmic hurricane is reiterated time and again in the Hindu Vedasand in the Persian Avesta* and diluvium venti, the deluge of wind, is a term known from many ancient authors. In the Section, "The Darkness," I quoted rabbinical sources on the "exceedingly strong west wind" that endured for seven days when the land was enveloped in darkness, and the hieroglyphic inscription from el-Arish about "nine days of upheaval" when "there was such a tempest" that nobody could leave the palace or see the faces of those beside him, and the eleventh tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh which says that "six days and a night . . . the hurricane, deluge, and tempest continued sweeping the land," and mankind perished almost altogether.
In the battle of the planet-god Marduk with Tia-mat, "he [Marduk] created the evil wind, and the tempest, and the hurricane, and the fourfold wind, and the sevenfold wind, and the whirlwind,
and the wind which had no equal."
The Maoris narrate that amid a stupendous catastrophe "the mighty winds, the fierce squalls,the clouds, dense, dark, fiery, wildly drifting, wildly bursting," rushed on creation, in their midst
Tawhiri-ma-tea, father of winds and storms, and swept away giant forests and lashed the waters into billows whose crests rose high like mountains. The earth groaned terribly, and the ocean fled.
"The earth was submerged in the ocean but was drawn by Tefaafa-nau," relate the aborigines of Paumotu in Polynesia. The new isles "were bated by a star."
In the month of March the Polynesians celebrate a god, Taafanua."
In Arabic, Tyfoon is a whirlwind and Tufan is the Deluge; and the same word occurs in Chinese as Ty-fong. It appears as though the noise of the hurricane was over-toned by a sound not unlike the name Typhon, as if the storm were calling him by name.
In the Japanese cosmogonical myth, the sun goddess hid herself for a long time in a heavenly cave in fear of the storm god. "The source of light disappeared, the whole world became dark," and the storm god caused monstrous destruction. Gods made terrible noise so that the sun should reappear, and from their tumult the earth quaked. In Japan and in the vast extent of the ocean hurricanes and earthquakes are not rare occurrences; but they do not disturb the day-night
succession, nor is there any resulting permanent change in the sky and its luminaries.
"The sky was low," relate the Polynesians of Takaofo Island, and "then the winds and waterspouts and the hurricanes came, and carried up the sky to its present height."
"When a world cycle is destroyed by wind," says the Buddhist text on the "World Cycles," the wind also turns "the ground upside down, and throws it into the sky," and "areas of one hundred
leagues in extent, two hundred, three hundred, five hundred leagues in extent, crack and are thrown upward by the force of the wind" and do not fall again but are "blown to powder in the sky and annihilated." "And the wind throws up also into the sky the mountains which encircle the earth . . . [they] are ground to powder and destroyed." The cosmic wind blows and destroys "a hundred thousand times ten million worlds."
References:
