Current:Home > InvestScientists Are Learning More About Fire Tornadoes, The Spinning Funnels Of Flame-LoTradeCoin
Scientists Are Learning More About Fire Tornadoes, The Spinning Funnels Of Flame
View Date:2024-12-23 19:56:04
Climate change is driving longer and more intense wildfire seasons, and when fires get big enough they can create their own extreme weather. That weather includes big funnels of smoke and flame called "fire tornadoes." But the connection between the West's increasingly severe fires and those tornadoes remains hazy.
In late June, firefighters on the Tennant Fire in Northern California captured footage that went viral.
A video posted on Facebook shows a funnel cloud glowing red from flame. It looks like a tornado, or more commonly, a dust devil. It's almost apocalyptic as the swirl of smoke, wind and flame approaches fire engines, heavy machinery and a hotel sign swaying in the wind.
Jason Forthofer, a firefighter and mechanical engineer at the U.S. Forest Service's Missoula Fire Sciences Lab in Montana, said funnels like this one are called "fire whirls." He said the difference between whirls and tornadoes is a matter of proportion.
"Fire tornadoes are more of that, the larger version of a fire whirl, and they are really the size and scale of a regular tornado," he said.
Forthofer said the reason for the proliferation of images and videos like that whirl on the Tennant Fire might just be that people are keeping better track of them.
"Most likely it's much easier to document them now because everybody walks around with a camera essentially in their pocket on their phone," he said.
The data's too young to be sure, he said, but it is plausible fire tornadoes are occurring more often as fires grow more intense and the conditions that create them more frequent.
The ingredients that create fire whirls are heat, rotating air, and conditions that stretch out that rotation along its axis, making it stronger.
Forthofer can simulate those ingredients in a chamber in the lab. He heads towards an empty, 12-foot-tall tube and pours alcohol into its bottom, and then finds a lighter to get the flames going.
A spinning funnel of fire, about a foot in diameter, shoots upward through the tube.
In the real world, it's hard to say how frequently fire whirls or tornadoes happened in the past, since they often occur in remote areas with no one around. But Forthofer went looking for them; he found evidence of fire tornadoes as far back as 1871, when catastrophic fires hit Chicago and Wisconsin.
"I realized that these giant tornado sized fire whirls, let's call them, happen more frequently than we thought, and a lot of firefighters didn't even realize that was even a thing that was even possible," Forthofer said.
National Weather Service Meteorologist Julie Malingowski said fire tornadoes are rare, but do happen. She gives firefighters weather updates on the ground during wildfires, which can be life or death information. She said the most important day-to-day factors that dictate fire behavior, like wind, heat and relative humidity, are a lot more mundane than those spinning funnels of flame.
"Everything the fire does as far as spread, as soon as a fire breaks out, is reliant on what the weather's doing around it," Malingowski said.
Researchers are tracking other extreme weather behavior produced by fires, like fire-generated thunderstorms from what are called pyrocumulonimbus clouds, or pyroCBs. Those thunderstorms can produce dangerous conditions for fire behavior, including those necessary for fire tornadoes to occur.
Michael Fromm, a meteorologist at the Naval Research Lab in Washington, D.C., said the information only goes back less than a decade, but the overall number of PyrcoCBs generated in North America this year is already higher than any other year in the dataset.
"And the fire season isn't even over yet," he said.
veryGood! (953)
Related
- Garth Brooks wants to move his sexual assault case to federal court. How that could help the singer.
- When is iOS 17 available? Here's what to know about the new iPhone update release
- Woman and father charged with murder, incest after 3 dead infants found in cellar in Poland
- 1-year-old dies of suspected opioid exposure at NYC daycare, 3 hospitalized: Police
- Zendaya Shares When She Feels Extra Safe With Boyfriend Tom Holland
- Activists in Europe mark the anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s death in police custody in Iran
- Zibby’s Bookshop in Santa Monica, California organizes books by emotion rather than genre
- An explosion hits an apartment in northern Syria. At least 1 person was killed with others wounded
- Off the Grid: Sally breaks down USA TODAY's daily crossword puzzle, Something Corporate
- Maui death toll from wildfires drops to at least 97; officials say 31 still missing
Ranking
- Dallas Long, who won 2 Olympic medals while dominating the shot put in the 1960s, has died at 84
- Thousands of 3rd graders could be held back under Alabama’s reading law, school chief warns
- U.S. border agents are separating migrant children from their parents to avoid overcrowding, inspector finds
- Timeline leading to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s acquittal in his impeachment trial
- DWTS' Gleb Savchenko Shares Why He Ended Brooks Nader Romance Through Text Message
- College football Week 3 grades: Colorado State's Jay Norvell is a clown all around
- Egyptian court gives a government critic a 6-month sentence in a case condemned by rights groups
- Is ice cream good for sore throat? The answer may surprise you.
Recommendation
-
Crews battle 'rapid spread' conditions against Jennings Creek fire in Northeast
-
Author Jessica Knoll Hated Ted Bundy's Story, So She Turned It Into Her Next Bestseller
-
Shohei Ohtani's locker cleared out, and Angels decline to say why
-
Book excerpt: Astor by Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe
-
Deion Sanders says he would prevent Shedeur Sanders from going to wrong team in NFL draft
-
Misery Index Week 3: Michigan State finds out it's facing difficult rebuild
-
Inter Miami CF vs. Atlanta United highlights: Atlanta scores often vs. Messi-less Miami
-
Former Phillies manager Charlie Manuel suffers a stroke in Florida hospital