This rare phenomenon was caught on film
On Saturday a rare and fiery tornado was spotted near a fire in Northern California. The National Weather Service Office issued a tornado warning for a pyrocumulonimbus cloud. The cloud had formed by the Loyalton Fire, and the organization said it was “capable of producing a fire-induced tornado and outflow winds in excess of 60 mph.”
Wendell Hohmann, a NWS forecaster, issued the tornado warning and said that it was the first time to his knowledge that a tornado of such a nature has been issued “outside of a thunderstorm environment.” Neil Lareau, who studies extreme fire behavior at the University of Nevada at Reno, said that he was “Not aware of this ever before.”
A pyrocumulonimbus cloud forms where there is intense rising heat, most of which comes from a fire or volcano. Fire tornadoes are thus created when the rising heat from a fire pulls in smoke, fire and dirt. This creates a rotation vortex above the blaze that can be massive and deadly.
Officials in California, Oregon, and Colorado are currently battling a series of wildfires that all together have burned more than 100,000 acres. With more heat heading for the United States, the National Weather Service predicts that things could get worse.
So far, the Loyalton Fire has burned 20,000 acres in the Tahoe National Forest. While nearly five percent was contained by early Sunday, the blaze still remains and is burning east of the town of Loyalton.
One fire tornado that proved to be deadly occurred in 2018. A rotating blaze in Redding caused by the Carr fire claimed the lives of a firefighter and bulldozer driver.
The fire tornado maintained wind speeds equal to an EF-3 tornado, was 1,000 feet in diameter and reached about 40,000 feet into the sky. The fiery twister that formed in Northern California is a record-setting heat wave that is baking the West.
By: Maytinee Kramer