Fire tornadoes, though a recent discovery, are an extremely dangerous consequence of wildfires.
What's happening?
The raging Park Fire in Northern California has already consumed over 400,000 acres, and it could also be spawning the potentially deadly fire tornadoes, as The Washington Post detailed last week.
The wildfire in Butte, Plumas, Shasta, and Tehama Counties started when someone allegedly pushed a burning car into a gully July 24, and it quickly became the biggest fire of the year in the state. It already is the fifth-largest wildfire in California history and has contributed to an extremely active fire season, CBS News reported.
Fire tornadoes happen when winds produce vortexes similar to those in normal tornadoes. The existence of one, however, can't be confirmed until after a fire is extinguished and wind damage can be evaluated.
The Post reported that last Thursday the fire's smoke plume exceeded 25,000 feet, "behaving, in essence, as its own miniature thunderstorm and 'feeling' the changing winds at different levels of the atmosphere." This can spark lightning as well as fire tornadoes.
The latter phenomenon was documented for the first time in 2003 in Canberra, Australia, where winds reached 160 mph. The Park Fire began in Chico, which is near Redding, the site of the 2018 Carr Fire. That fire had 143 mph winds and a fire tornado that killed four people, including a firefighter, per the Post.
Why is this important?
As the Post noted, the Canberra fire tornado was thought to be a fluke. But there have been many more since then. They're also likely to increase in frequency with the rise in wildfires.
Rising temperatures around the world are making wildfires more common, and they're more intense. That's because hotter weather dries out vegetation, which leads to "longer and more active fire seasons," according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
These natural disasters are made worse by the human-caused warming of the planet, doubling the area of forest that burned in the West from 1984 to 2015. In addition to threatening human life, wildlife, property, and more, these wildfires affect air quality and our health, harming our skin and lungs.
What's being done about wildfires?
The Post warned that firefighters should be on the lookout for fire tornadoes, and the Park Fire offers a cautionary tale about fire prevention as well.
While nothing can be done if someone wants to commit arson, the City of Chico Fire Department had planned a prescribed burn near where the fire started, The Sacramento Bee reported. It didn't happen because of a lack of resources.
That may have turned a one-day, $10,000 project into something that will cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars.
"Really targeted burning at the right times of year can be really impactful, even if they're not big projects," Lenya Quinn-Davidson, Fire Network director at the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, told the Bee. "A small project right around a community or home can be a total game changer. And we shouldn't underestimate that."
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