It was late in the northern martian spring when the HiRISE
camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter this local
denizen. Tracking south and east (down and right) across the
flat, dust-covered the core of the whirling dust devil is about
30 meters in diameter. Lofting dust into the thin atmosphere,
its plume reaches more than 800 meters above the surface. Not
following the path of the dust devil, the plume is blown toward
the east by a westerly breeze. Common in this region, dust
devils occur as the surface is heated by the Sun, generating
warm, rising air currents that begin to rotate. wind speeds of
up to 110 kilometers per hour are reported dust devils in other
HiRISE images.