According to the National Weather Service, a rare fire tornado or 'firenado,' is an 'extreme weather phenomenon that can occur with rotating fire columns.'
"This is a very similar process to what we'd see in the thunderstorm where you'd get these rising updrafts in a thunderstorm and the thunderstorm clouds grow to 30,000, 40,000 feet," Johnson said."But, in this case, it was a fire and it was smoke."
All of the air rushing upwards has to be replaced at the surface, Johnson said. As air comes back it, sometimes, starts to rotate. Due to wind shear on Saturday, the air that was rising from the fire and the air that was replacing it started to rotate.Southern California wildfire feeds on 'decadent' fuels, grows to nearly 18,000 acres in Angeles National Forest
"Between that and the local effects of terrain — we have mountains and valleys all over the place surrounding where this fire is — we would get this little spin-ups," she said."We'd get these stretching columns of air that are now rotating and, as they elongated, it actually produced these vortices and the tornado we saw from the fire."
It'll take some time to send in a team to do a proper damage assessment of the fire tornado because, as Johnson put it,"It's on fire." "We just want to make sure anybody who is in the vicinity of the fire is heeding evacuation orders and staying away if they don't need to be in there," Johnson said."We want to make sure everyone is staying safe — that includes firefighters there on the ground."
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