Is This a True Fire Tornado?
/This video was posted recently to TikTok and is from one of the areas that is being devastated by wildfires on the west coast of the United States. (When we have more information we will update this article.)
Is this a true fire tornado?
In order to answer this question we first must understand what a true fire tornado is. Often people call a fire whirl a fire tornado or firenado but just as a dust devil is not a tornado, similarly, fire whirls are not true tornadoes.
Fire whirls are whirlwinds caused by a fire and are usually small in size. Though some can be similar to a landspout tornado, a rope like funnel that forms from a thunderstorm that has no rotating updraft. Landspout tornadoes can be dangerous and the damage caused tends to be EF2 or lower on the Enhanced Fujita scale.
A prerequisite to a true fire tornado is a pyrocumulonimbus cloud which is a Cumulonimbus (Cb) cloud that forms above a heat source like a wildfire but could also form above a volcanic eruption. Supercell thunderstorms which sometimes produce tornadoes also have cumulonimbus clouds. A supercell has a mesocyclone, a deep persistent rotating updraft. This rotation is what can sometimes result in a tornado.
This excellent video explains the proof that the Australian researchers had that a true fire tornado was responsible for the catastrophic destruction during the Canberran bushfires in 2003.
This is the first documented true fire tornado.
The Fire tornado video taken by Tom Bates has a time stamped description of the features of the tornado. The estimated wind speeds in excess of 250km/hr resulted in it being classified as an EF3 tornado.
On July 18 2018, a second true fire tornado was documented in Redding, California. The Carr Fire spawned an EF3 fire tornado. This is also the strongest tornado recorded to date in California.
Another possible fire tornado occurred recently (December 30 2019) in Australia and sadly resulted in the death of a volunteer firefighter when his truck was flipped over.
For the first time the National Weather Service issued a tornado warning due to a fire on August 15 2020. The NWS saw rotation on radar associated with the pyrocumulonimbus cloud from the Loyalton Wildfire in Southeastern Lassen County in northern California and they issued this tornado warning:
Fire Tornado Warning from NWS
They also issued the following related tweets:
Tweets from NWS Reno
Any tornado is dangerous just as any wildfire is dangerous but a fire tornado is even more dangerous especially to firefighters battling the fire.
To our knowledge (at the time of publishing this article) there was no similar tornado warning issued recently. Even if there wasn’t a tornado warning or a tornadic pyrocumulonimbus cloud associated with this fire vortex, this is more significant event than a small fire whirl. There is not enough information at this time to answer the question of whether or not the TikTok video is showing a true fire tornado.
The wildfires that are occurring in the United States are devastating. Our thoughts are with all those that are affected.
References and further reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Fujita_scale
https://www.nssl.noaa.gov/education/svrwx101/tornadoes/types/
https://esa.act.gov.au/cbr-be-emergency-ready/bushfires/fire-tornado-video
https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/californias-carr-fire-spawned-true-fire-tornado
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqYEeivt8Eg
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-31/rfs-volunteer-firefighter-dies-in-truck-rollover/11833634
