Reader\'s Digest India - 09.2019

Reader’s Digest

136 september 2019

over Bully Choop Mountain and into

the Sacramento Valley, the 30-degree

difference caused warm air to shoot up

in a vortex. As day turned to dusk, the

convection column would rotate faster

and faster, contorting into a cyclone.

Sometime after 5:30 p.m., as Lubas

finished grocery shopping, the sky

grew dark. The fire’s behaviour

alarmed him, so he went back to work,

driving to the hills north-west of Red-

ding to assist in evacuating residents.

But more than an hour later, at the

intersection of Keswick Dam and

Quartz Hill roads near Lake Keswick

Estates, he stopped. He was blocked.

Ahead of him, the tornado twisted.

It was sinister and snake-like, a swirl

of orange that seemed to fill the

entire sky. Flames soared 120 metres

in the air. It wouldn’t touch down

for another hour, but it was rapidly

gaining strength. The tornado would

grow to 300 metres wide, the length

of three football fields, and pro-

duce temperatures double those of a

typical wildfire. Its howling oblite-

rated every other sound.

Lubas jumped out of his truck

to record a video on his cell phone

and was immediately blown on

to his back. Goosebumps prickled

his arms. Nobody is going to believe

this, he thought, scrambling back

into his truck.

Escape to Keswick Dam

About 7 p.m., across the Sacramento

River, a few miles west of Lubas, Patrick

County fairgrounds in Redding.

It was supposed to be his day off,

and he planned to shower and rest.

From his truck window, he could see

coastal winds stoking the blaze and

smoke thickening.

Lubas was worried. He watched

as a 9,000-metre-tall convection

column—a plume filled with ash,

debris and hydrocarbons—ballooned

in the sky, sucking up the hot air as

oxygen fed the fire.

As he drove, his truck registered

the temperature outside: 45ºC. On the

coast, 150 kilometres to the west, it

was 15ºC. As the cool coastal air blew

Tom Lubas,

incident

commander

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