More Dust Devil Trivia

In poking around the net, it turns out that Wikipedia has a pretty good entry on dust devils. In addition to the Navajo belief that 'if a dust devil spins clockwise, it is said to represent a good spirit; and if it spins counterclockwise it is said to be a bad spirit,' there is this tidbit:

Dust devils, even small ones (on Earth) can produce radio noise and electrical fields greater than 10,000 volts per meter. A dust devil picks up small dirt and dust particles. As the particles whirl around they bump and scrape into each other and become electrically charged. The whirling charged particles also create a magnetic field that fluctuates between 3 and 30 times each second.

These electrical fields assist the vortices in lifting materials off the ground and into the atmosphere. Field experiments indicate that a dust devil can lift 1 gram of dust per second from each square meter (10 lb/s from each acre) of ground it passes over. A large dust devil measuring about 100 meters (330 ft) across at its base can lift about 15 metric tons (17 short tons) of dust into the air in 30 minutes. Giant dust storms that sweep across the world's deserts contribute eight percent of the mineral dust in the atmosphere each year during the handful of storms that occur. In comparison, the significantly smaller dust devils that twist across the deserts during the summer lift about three times as much dust, thus having a greater combined impact on the dust content of the atmosphere. When this occurs, they are often called sand pillars.

This has me wondering about the relationship between electricity and a large parent mesocyclone again. If a dust devil can generate fields greater than 10,000 volts per meter, you have to wonder what a large, persistent mesocyclone is capable of producing.

This also makes me wonder if there may be some artificial means of creating large, rapidly rotating air columns that could somehow be used to generate electricity. It's out there, I know - but interesting to consider.