Oregon wildfires cause ‘clouds of fire’ miles high as flames grow | Oregon

Meteorologists this week also spotted a larger and more extreme form of the fiery cloud – those that can create their own weather, including “fire tornadoes.”

The extreme fire behavior, including the formation of more fire clouds, is expected to persist on Friday and worsen through the weekend. There are currently at least 70 wildfires burning in the western United States and dozens more in Canada.

Firefighters scrambled to control the raging Bootleg fire on Friday, which is spreading for miles a day in windy conditions. Authorities have ordered another round of evacuations, fearing that hell, which has already destroyed 21 homes, may merge with another blaze that has also exploded.

Pyrocumulus clouds – literally translated as “clouds of fire” – look like giant, dirty-colored thunder heads that sit atop a vast column of smoke from a forest fire . Often the top of the smoke column flattens out into the shape of an anvil.

In Oregon, firefighters say clouds form between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. each day as the sun penetrates the layer of smoke and warms the ground below, creating an updraft of warm air. The crews see the biggest and most dangerous clouds above a part of the wilderness made up mostly of dead trees, which burn instantly and with great heat.

For four consecutive days, the Bootleg fire generated multiple clouds of fire that rise nearly six miles into the atmosphere and are “easily visible from 100 to 120 air miles,” the authorities. The conditions creating the clouds are expected to worsen over the weekend.

When a pyrocumulus cloud forms over a fire, meteorologists begin to watch closely its big brother, the pyrocumulonimbus cloud. NASA called the latter the “fire-breathing dragon of the clouds” because it is so hot and so big that it creates its own climate.

In the worst-case scenario, fire crews on the ground could see one of the monster clouds spawn a “tornado of fire”, generate its own dry lightning, and create dangerous hot winds below. Clouds can also send column particles of smoke up to 10 miles above the Earth’s surface.

So far, most clouds over the Bootleg fire have been less intense fire clouds, but the National Weather Service spotted a pyrocumulonimbus cloud forming in what it called on Wednesday. “terrifying” satellite imagery.

“Please send positive thoughts and wishes to the firefighters… It’s a tough time for them right now,” the Weather Service said in a tweet.

Meanwhile, a blaze near the northern California town of Paradise, which was largely destroyed by a 2018 wildfire that killed 85 people, worried homeowners who were just starting to return. to normal after surviving the deadliest fire in U.S. history.

And in Washington, a wildfire threatened more than 1,500 homes near Wenatchee, reaching 14 square miles (36 km2), and crews had little control over it, the Department of Natural Resources said. Washington State.

Extremely dry conditions and heat waves linked to climate change swept through the western United States, making wildfires more difficult to fight. Climate change has made the region much hotter and drier over the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and forest fires more frequent and destructive.