A rare summer thunderstorm brought lightning that erupted several small blizzards in Northern California on Sunday and ignited an enormous wildfire that forced hundreds of people out of their homes north of Los Angeles.
More than 4,500 buildings were threatened by the fire that burned to thick, dry brush in the Angeles National Forest. Firefighters are already battling the blaze in steep, rugged terrain with scorching heat for more obstacles as hundreds of lightning strikes and winds up to 15 mph shoot the flames upward.
“We put a contained line at the top of the hills so that the fire did not overwhelm to the other side and cause it to spread, but it was apparently difficult considering the wrong wind and some other conditions,” said fire spokesman Jake Miller .
The Lake Fire was contained just 12% on Sunday and has burned nearly 28 square miles of brush and trees. Firefighters said 33 buildings were destroyed, including at least a dozen houses.
Incomprehensible weather triggers an unusual warning due to the weather service of a tornado by fire during a wildfire out of control that erupted Saturday afternoon north of Lake Tahoe.
A massive cloud of fire, known as a pyrocumulonimbus, formed over the fire, which started east of the city of Loyalton, about 40 miles west of Reno, Nevada. When high winds collided with the fire and it blew into the air, a spectacular tornado-shaped spiral of flames formed.
The fire has burned at least 45 square miles and caused evacuation cover for sparsely populated communities along State Route 395 through the California-Nevada border, said Joe Flannery, spokesman for Tahoe National Forest.
Firefighters helped by water-dropping helicopters and air tankers looked for “extreme fire behavior,” he said, and worked through the night to put out spot fires and protect endangered structures.
At one point, the fast-moving fire jumped off a highway and came dangerously close to a fire truck. A Truckee firefighter tweeted a video of firefighters dragging snakes as they ran past a moving truck extinguishing the flames.
Ryan Peel said firefighters created some defensive space around his distribution package for slot machines in Chilcoot, but he feared the wrongful winds could still set his business on fire.
“Yesterday was very emotional because we were at the mercy of the wind and the unpredictability of the fire,” Peel told The Associated Press. “I was stressed and terrified of the idea of losing everything I had worked on my life.”
With zero containment and strong winds in the forecast, he said, “we are not out of the woods yet.”
Thunder and too much heat were also a concern for firefighters battling a blaze that burned nearly 4 square miles in the foothills above the Los Angeles suburb of Azusa. The fire, believed Thursday to be started by a homeless man, contained only 3%.
APU GOMES
Many areas of the state saw triple-digit temperatures over the weekend and the combination of prolonged heat and smoke from fires sent ozone pollution to levels not seen in an area in a decade. Air quality can reach unusual to very unusual levels in several regions of Southern California on Sunday and Monday afternoons, the South Coast Air Quality Management District said.
In Northern California, moisture from a tropical storm offshore a thunderstorm that struck early Sunday caused nonstop lightning strikes, some of which ignited small fires and swept power over the San Francisco Bay Area.
Wind speeds reach 75 mph, according to the National Water Service, which said another round of lightning could develop early Monday.
“This is probably the most widespread and violent summer immortal event in memory for Bay Area, and it’s also one of the hottest nights in years,” tweeted Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles.
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