California wildfire spawns ‘firenado’ as tornado warning issued amid

A wildfire in northern California spawned at least one fire tornado – or “firenado” – on Saturday, prompting the National Weather Service to issue a tornado warning as the state continues to endure a heatwave and wildfires.“Extremely dangerous fire behavior noted on the #LoyaltonFire! Rotating columns and potential for fire whirls,” NWS Reno tweeted on Saturday. NWS Reno later said the “tornadic pyrocumulus has weakened & the immediate threat of tornadic activity has decreased for the #LoyaltonFire,” but warned that “extreme fire behavior will continue into this evening w/new Fire Tornadoes & strong gusts in excess of 60mph remain possible. Stay away from the fire area.”The Loyalton fire in Lassen county, north east of Sacramento, has burned 20,000 acres and was 5% contained by early Sunday, according to CNN. Large wildfires can heat air so much that huge clouds develop. In strong winds, these can rotate and sometimes produce a tornado. One fire tornado caught on film killed one person in 2018. Officials in California, Oregon and Colorado have been battling a series of wildfires that have collectively torched more than 100,000 acres amid an intense heatwave. A severe lightning storm also hit the San Francisco Bay Area early Sunday morning, a rare weather event for August that triggered wildfires in the region. The NWS on Sunday extended a red flag fire warning for “critical fire weather conditions” for the Bay Area until Monday morning.“Any lightning strikes will likely lead to new fire starts given the current heat wave,” the NWS forecasters warned. “A secondary pulse of moisture and instability arrives later Sunday into early Monday.”The storm came as California faces a heatwave of triple-digit temperatures, and after thousands of households across the state suffered brief power outages – the first rolling outages in nearly 20 years.

All data is taken from the source: https://www.theguardian.com/
Article Link: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...


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