The state’s largest wildfire of the year doubled in size Thursday night, sending explosive flames spinning into the atmosphere in a manner that can only be described as a tornado — a real-life example of a fire tornado.
California Alert wildfire cameras captured video of a massive fire swirl, showing the extreme fire behavior that led to the Park Fire sweeping through Butte and Tahoma counties.
As of Friday afternoon, the fire had grown to more than 178,000 acres, forcing thousands of people to evacuate and destroying more than 100 structures. A fire in Chico on Wednesday was caused by arson, officials said.
“At this point, the fires are creating their own weather, and that can be quite unpredictable,” said Courtney Carpenter, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento. “Really large, explosive wildfires can produce thunderstorms, They can create swirling plumes of fire that mimic tornadoes.”
Carpenter said meteorologists tracked the large, swirling plumes on radar Thursday night as a signature of “explosive fire growth.”
The wildfires also produced thunderstorm clouds but did not exactly trigger lightning, as some previous particularly unstable fires have produced, she said.
UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said on his YouTube channel that witnessing the fire producing large amounts of swirling smoke, possibly even several vortices, shows the rare and powerful nature of the fire. He said the park fire had “supercell thunderstorm-like characteristics.”
Swain said there is a growing awareness that extreme wildfires can produce other dangerous phenomena that are not directly related to flames.
He said it’s not uncommon for fires to change their environment by causing localized wind currents, but large fires like the Park Fire may even start “generating their own mesoscale weather systems that look a lot like severe thunderstorms.”
New research also finds that climate change is increasing the scale and frequency of such behavior and bringing it to new areas, he added.
“There is evidence that these large and potentially dangerous pyrocumulonimbus events are increasing in a warming climate as fire intensity increases,” he said.
Carpenter said the weather service will not issue tornado warnings when a fire spin develops because residents in the area should have been evacuated. Evacuation orders have been issued for more than 4,000 people in communities in and around northeast Chico and parts of southern Tehama County.
“We urge people to follow orders from local officials,” Carpenter said. “If you live near a fire, please pay close attention to the situation and be prepared to leave.”
