VIRTUAL TOUR OF UPPER LANE COUNTY
Devil's Churn - in a foamy mood
The Devil's Churn on a particularly wild, stormy spring day in 1993, creating a distinctively crazy spectacle. On this day, the blooms of phytoplankton called dinoflagellates - which create most of the sea foam you see - were especially big. So the combination of that, high wind and wild seas made an excess of sea foam. You can see hints of it here as one huge flurry of snow-like sea foam gets blasted towards the camera by a large wave.
Not visible here was the stunning, strange effect of all this flying sea foam: it caused giant chunks of sea foam to go flying upwards - looking like snow going the wrong direction.
Other photos reveal the dramatic wave action that keeps this place a tourism hotspot on the Oregon coast.