A massive wildfire in Northern California erupted Saturday with spinning columns of flames, prompting forecasters to issue a rare fire-related tornado warning.
“It was a first for us,” said Shane Snyder, a meteorologist with the National Water Service in Reno, who issued the warning shortly before 3 p.m.
Several videos posted on social media showed twister-like formations in the path of the Loyalton fire, which began Friday night in the Tahoe National Forest near the California-Nevada border. The fire quickly grew to 20,000 acres and was 0% contained as of Sunday morning. Authorities conducted updated flight mapping and expected the area to go up, said Joe Flannery, public affairs officer for the national forest.
“Our ground sources are subject to extreme fire behavior, rough terrain and hot temperatures,” Flannery said.
Evan Bentley, meteorologist for severe weather with the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center, wrote on Twitter that radar data showed at least four “distinct anticyclonal circulations” associated with the fire on Saturday. One was present for more than an hour and traveled about four miles, he wrote.
After all, the phenomenon of extreme weather is sparked by the rapid growth and intensity of the blaze.
“It was hot; it was very unstable atmospheric,” Snyder said in an interview, “and that could cause the fire, which was burning hot and [through] a lot of fuel, to really explode in a vertical sense, up in the atmosphere. ”
The hotter the air, the faster it rises, he said.
“Hot air wants to rise, and when it’s very hot, it wants to rise dramatically,” Snyder said. “It can rise, because the temperature of the air that makes the fire is much warmer than the air around it. That it keeps rising until it is not warmer than the air around it. ”
That could send a column of smoke tens of thousands of feet into the atmosphere, he said. And as it rises, the air beneath it must be replaced, creating a vortex that draws air from everything around it.
At the same time, it causes changes in wind speeds that occur higher up in the atmosphere, causing the air to spin as it accelerates to the top.
“With that rapid rise, you’re spinning your fire tornado,” Snyder said. “It starts to spin when it comes up.”
Fire tornadoes are rare, but not uncommon in California.
A spinning vortex that ran in Redding during the Carr fire in July 2018 was roughly 1,000 feet in diameter and reached speeds of 136-165 mph, similar to a twister with an EF-3 rating at the five-level improved Fujita scale, according to the California Department of State Forest Management and Fire Protection. The fire tornado killed a firefighter as he rode in flames to a neighborhood, an investigation later found.
In 2008, a whirlwind of firefighters by surprise caught in the fire of the Indians, who were burning in very dry chapels in the Los Padres National Forest. It caused serious injuries and forced the deployment of firefighters.
Most recently, on Wednesday, a flaming tornado was seen spinning from the Lake fire, hours after the light burst in the Angeles National Forest above Lake Hughes.
“The fire grew from 400 to 10,000 acres very, very fast, in the span of a few hours,” Jake Miller, public information officer for the Lake fire, said Sunday. “That’s when you start seeing these fire tornadoes and fireflies that start.”
The fire had grown to 17,862 acres and was 12% contained as of Sunday morning. At least 12 homes and commercial buildings were destroyed, and about 250 people remained under evacuation files.
Although the growth had lost quite a bit, challenges remained. Three-digit temperatures, low relative humidity and heavy fuels combine to create the potential for continued dispersal, Miller said.
The most active flank of the fire was the northwestern part, which burned in a remote area largely accessible by road, he said.
“It’s an area that has simply not burned in about 100 years, so there’s a lot of active fuel,” Miller said. ‘That’s why we’re getting more and more activity this afternoon – it’s getting hot and kind of sparking the fire again. Then we have the mixture of that with the fuel out there, and the combination of those two kinds of reignites the fire. ”
As the fire chews through the sun-baked brush dried out by the midday heat, it emits a large plume of smoke, which in turn creates its own problems by generating unfair wind gusts that throw unknowingly into the air, he said. .
“We got some spotting, that is, members of the fire hit in the air and then drifted down and made a small fire just outside the current perimeter,” Miller said. “We saw that yesterday, but we did not have the fire tornadoes, really.”
Further complicating the attempt were thunderstorms that swept through the area Saturday, causing lightning strikes that also contributed to spots outside the perimeter of the fire, Miller said.
Storms were reported in the area of the Loyalton fire Saturday, and more were forecast for Sunday, threatening to ground the plane needed to fight the fire, Flannery said.
“Firefighters on the line reported extreme fire behavior that was sometimes displayed, especially when overhead thunder cells passed through,” he said. “They cause these downdowns that can create dangerous fire conditions.”
Several evacuation files remained in place for parts of the province of Plumas, Lassen and Sierra.
More widespread thunderstorms were forecast for later in the day Sunday in the area north of Azusa, where the Ranch 2 fire burned a 2,256-acre swath through the Angeles National Forest.
“What drives this fire is the dry brush, the hot temperatures and the steep terrain, which makes it difficult to contain,” said Daniela Zepeda, public information officer for the National Forest.
Firefighters worked to keep the fire burning on the north side of San Gabriel Canyon and protect the communities of Azusa, Monrovia, Duarte and Bradbury in the south, she said. They also tried to keep the flames west of Highway 39, east of Van Tassel Ridge and south of Rincon Red Box Road, Zepeda said.
All evacuation orders had been lifted, but it was possible more could be placed due to the active nature of the fire, which continued to rise to the north, west and east, she said.
The fire broke out Thursday in the San Gabriel River bed and was contained 7% as of Sunday morning.
Investigators were looking for a man who was believed to have started the fire. Police said the suspect, identified as 36-year-old Osmin Palencia, lived in an army in the riverbed at the source of the blaze.
The fires continued to burn amid scorching temperatures that predicted they could compete in a deadly Sunday heat event that hit California in 2006. Meanwhile, the cloud cover, associated with bands of thunderstorms, meant there was little chance for temperatures to cool during the day, as is typical during the dry weather that California normally sees, forecasters said.
Multiple heat records were set Saturday. The weather forecast reported a high of 112 in Woodland Hills, breaking the 108-set record in 1977, and a high of 92 at UCLA, and breaking the 90-set record in 2003. Downtown Los Angeles hit 98 degrees, setting a record set in 1994.
The warming was expected to continue through at least Thursday.
