A tumbleweed roughly the scale of a automobile was captured on video this week and posted on X, the place commenters in contrast it to an enormous hairball, stomach lint gone wild, and the critters from a 1986 sci-fi horror film.

@tuidelescribano/Screen shot by NPR

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@tuidelescribano/Screen shot by NPR

A large tumbleweed roughly the scale of a Volkswagen beetle was noticed hurtling its method down a four-lane highway in California this week.

The jaunty brown bundle of brush was captured on video and posted on Tuesday on X, previously often called Twitter, the place it has gathered various followers who’ve in contrast it to an enormous hairball, stomach lint gone wild, and the critters from the eponymously named 1986 sci-fi horror film.

The poster of the video supplied no details about the bouncing plant carcass, apart from to say that it was “the mother of all tumbleweeds.” But that bought us considering. Not nearly cowboys and basic Western films, however about the place tumbleweeds come from and their propensity for taking up roads and neighborhoods.

First off, tumbleweeds aren’t one particular species of plant. They fall underneath an umbrella of noxious weeds that when dry, break off on the root, setting off on a seed-spreading expedition.

One of the most typical and most problematic for crops is the Russian thistle, or Kali tragus. It is believed to have hitched a journey from Ukraine to South Dakota in a cargo of flaxseed again within the 1870s, and it has plagued the nation’s dry, arid lands ever since.

In 2020, a swarm of tumbleweeds took over a stretch of Washington state freeway that piled as much as 30 toes excessive in some locations. Cars and vehicles have been trapped for hours. Authorities dubbed it Tumblegeddon.

A few years later, about 100 properties in Victorville, California, have been seemingly swallowed up by 1000’s of prickly tumbleweeds that have been strewn about by 50 mph winds.

“It looked like a war of tumbleweeds, like we were being invaded,” Victorville resident Bryan Bagwell, 42, told NPR on the time.

In an identical incident in 2014, a tumbleweed explosion knocked down fences, blocked highways and trapped folks inside their properties in Colorado.

Experts say there’s extra tumbleweed tumult in our futures. A 2019 study from the University of California, Riverside, discovered {that a} new species of gigantic tumbleweeds — Salsola ryanii — that may develop as much as 6 toes tall, grows extra vigorously than others. They additionally say it is prone to increase its territory on account of local weather change.