'Firenadoes,' pyrocumulus clouds, and how CA wildfire has stunne

(RNN) – With improbable jumps, unpredictable turns, and “firenadoes,” the Carr fire ravaging Northern California has been so fierce it’s been described as “burning in every direction all at the same time.”

It is, in fact, such a force unto itself, it’s creating its own weather systems.

The combination of intense, dry heat, and strong winds have fed the fire as it spreads.

It has consumed everything in its path, rapidly heating air and absorbing moisture in its own convective cycles to produce pyrocumulus clouds – tall, dense clouds like the kind that appear over volcanic eruptions.

That system, in turn, has helped fuel the dramatic and frightening fire vortexes - "firenadoes" - as wind and updraft send a column of fire and smoke swirling.

Environmental scientists have marveled at the strength of the fire’s weather effects.

Neil Lareau, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Nevada, Reno, called it “scary as hell.”

“I shudder to think about the destruction from flame and wind in there,” he tweeted on Friday.

Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA, said it was “absolutely incredible.”

“A real testament to the intensity of the firestorm last night and the strength of the fire-induced convective vortex that occurred on the west side of Redding,” he tweeted the same day. “Not sure I’ve ever seen anything quite like this.”

Even though it’s very dry in an area like Redding, a city that’s been hit particularly hard by the fire, the intensity of the heat from the fire can still produce these systems. As long as it gets hot enough, there will be enough systemic stratification and instability for these phenomena, said Jonathan Garner, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Eureka office in Northern California.

“Even in the desert, it can get unstable enough, even if it’s pretty darn dry,” he said.

The fire has been devastating. With more than 1,100 structures leveled, the Carr fire is now California’s seventh-most destructive fire ever.

“It looked like an atomic bomb went off,” one Redding man who lost his home in the midst of a firestorm, Josh Lister, told CNN.

It’s something that even the hardened firefighters of California are calling unprecedented.

“We are seeing more destructive, larger fires burning at rates that we have historically never seen,” Jonathan Cox, a Cal Fire regional battalion chief, told CNN.

With wind finally dying down, after more than 100,000 acres have burned, officials are hopeful the Carr fire is now coming under control.

“We’re turning the corner,” Brett Gouvea, a Cal Fire incident commander, told the Redding Record Searchlight on Tuesday.

But, he added, “I hate saying those things (because) this thing has made me a liar so many times.”

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