‘Bugnado’ Swirls Over Missouri Dam

A weather enthusiast in Branson, Missouri, captured an unusual “bugnado,” as he called it, at the Table Rock Dam on May 31.

Corey Taylor took the footage of the swirling vortex of bugs downstream of the dam and posted it to the Twitter account Stormdar Weather Warning Feed, which he helps run.

‘Bugnadoes’ are typically created by midges, according to Joe Keiper, an entomologist at the Virginia Museum of Natural History, who spoke to NPR about the phenomenon.

Suggesting that the midges may be mating when they form such spirals, Keiper described bugnadoes as “a very fascinating sight from a scientific standpoint but also quite beautiful.”

The Branson occurrence may have been triggered by a scheduled spillway release of the dam that took place on May 30 in an effort to “minimize flood damages,” according to a statement issued by the US Army Corps of Engineers Little Rock District. Credit: Stormdar Weather via Storyful