Parookaville, if you haven't heard of it already, is a three-day-long EDM festival in Weeze, Germany. Its debut in 2015 attracted 25,000 people, but by 2017 it sold out 80,000 tickets in just two days. So, you can bet it was getting pretty massive when it came to its fourth event, in July this year.
Featuring headliners such as Steve Aoki, Solomun, and David Guetta, the festival is now more popular than ever. With the number of attendees going up, the festival had to extend their grounds and open three extra camping areas for this year.
However, there was one thing they didn't anticipate. Strong winds in the area meant that not only were their four minor injuries, but tents were literally being plucked out of the ground.
Just days after there was reportedly a 50-foot-high dust vortex in the middle of a football pitch in Cologne, the winds in this festival were strong enough to be officially declared a mini tornado. To see what it looks like when one of these tears through a campsite, watch the video below:
Mini-tornados, also referred to as "dust devils", can start as a result of soil becoming too hot from the sun - and can form in surprising ways.
"If the soil is strongly heated on a warm day, the air rises quickly, especially on dark soils such as a brown sports field," Meteorologist Dominik Jung explained. "Then the warm air rises quickly, the slightest turbulence in the ascent or wind shearing in vertical or horizontal directions put the ascending air in rotation and the dust-whirl is created."
Mad, right? Sure, it would be pretty hard not to stick around to catch it on video, but I don't think anyone would appreciate actually being hit with an entire tent.
