The Wildfire Tornado
Fire tornadoes, rotating columns of fire and smoke that possess windspeeds comparable to those in an actual tornado, are rare but
extremely destructive. Remarkably long-lived, these lethal objects can move out of the main fire, surprising and overcoming firefighters
and others. They can suck up debris such as burning logs from the ground and spit it far out, unpredictably starting fresh fires. Although
researchers understand the physics of fire tornadoes rather well, predicting when and where one will appear remains a challenge.64 Scientific American, December 2019
The Carr Fire Tornado
On July 26, 2018, a wildfire burning north
west of Redding, Calif., generated a large fire
tornado that killed up to four people and injured
several others. Apart from fire itself, generating
such an object requires a source of rotation in the air.
In this case, it most likely came from cold wind from
the Pacific Ocean blowing over the mountains to
the west of Redding and down into the Sacramento
Valley. There the fastmoving air encountered a pool
of slowmoving air, generating a breaking wave and
turbulence in much the same way as water from
a dam’s spillway meeting that in the river below. It
was this mass of rotating air, the author holds, that
generated several fire whirls—dustdevilsized
siblings of fire tornadoes—and finally the lethal
fire tornado on the outskirts of Redding.© 2019 Scientific American