Topline
A series of dangerous and unpredictable "fire whirls" have broken out on the California-Nevada state line as the York Fire rages in the Mojave National Preserve, sending spinning columns filled with smoke and flame as high as several hundred feet in the air, the National Park Service said.
In this photo provided by the National Park Service, smoke rises from the York Fire in the Mojave ... [+]
Key Facts
The York Fire, which started Friday on private land in California’s New York Mountain Range, has consumed more than 75,000 acres and was still 0% contained as of Monday night.
The Mojave National Preserve has reported "fire whirls," in the desert, described as a "vortex" of flame, smoke and debris that are created when hot air rises and cold air is pushed below.
The combination of high heat and intense winds combine to create a "spinning column of fire," the preserve said, which can change directions suddenly, speed up and slow down quickly and range in size from a few feet to several hundred in height.
Because of their size and speed, fire whirls can spread flaming embers far from the original site of the blaze and create new fires, which create "extremely dangerous" conditions for firefighters.
Smoke from the York Fire is reaching into Nevada and southern Utah and temperatures are expected to reach as high as 97 degrees Fahrenheit in the Eastern Mojave Desert Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service.
Monday saw 64 large fires burn more than 300,000 acres across nine states, the National Interagency Fire Center said, and more than 1.1 million acres have burned so far this year across the country.
Key Background
Fire whirls can also be called "firenados" or "fire tornados," but the smaller phenomena are created by the heat of flames and are not the same thing as a full-blown fire tornado, a separate weather event that will create its own firestorm cloud and cause surface winds as strong as traditional tornados, according to the Library of Congress. Fire whirls have been observed for a century and were first noted in scientific research in 1926, when an issue of the Monthly Weather Review described several “violent whirlwinds” in a five-day California blaze. The fire, started when lightning struck oil tanks, killed two people and caused $15 million in property damage, the equivalent of $255 million today. Fire whirls were also noted after the bombings of Hamburg and Dresden, Germany in World War II, the Library of Congress said, and in California's 2018 Carr Fire. It reportedly took a fire whirl .04 seconds in Australia to ignite more than 300 acres during the 2003 Canberra bushfires.
Crucial Quote
J.E. Hissong of the U.S. Weather Bureau office in San Luis Obispo first described fire whirls in 1926 as "the strangest meteorological phenomenon ever noted in connection with a fire."
Big Number
38,000. That's how many people are said to have been killed in 15 minutes by a fire whirl in Tokyo in 1923, according to the Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory.
Tangent
The York Fire, which officials said sparked due to dry vegetation and a series of recent heat waves, started in what scientists say was likely the hottest-ever July on record. The first three weeks of July were the warmest on record compared to the same time frame from 1940 to 2023, Al Jazeera reported, and broke the previous record for surface air temperature set in July of 2019. Though not yet confirmed, the World Meteorological Organization of the United Nations said it is “extremely likely” July broke the record for the hottest July and the hottest month. The WMO predicts there is a 98% chance at least one of the next five years will be the warmest ever recorded.
Further Reading
California’s York Fire Grows To 77,000 Acres—Biggest This Year In Golden State (Forbes)
Phoenix’s 31-Day Streak Of Temperatures Above 110 Degrees Ends (Forbes)
