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The climate crisis is no longer just a concern for the future.

It’s raging around us right here, right now, and what’s happening in America at the moment is proof.

Wildfires in California and Canada are not new and climate scientists have warned for decades that the world would see hotter temperatures, worse heatwaves, and more terrifying forest fires.

Even the ocean was recently on fire.

Once again a depressing heatwave is scorching the American West, creating massive wildfires that are blazing across thousands of acres of land.

Gizmodo reports that this year’s wildfires in California alone are outpacing the damage caused by last year’s record-setting fire season.

Dare I say it; it’s unprecedented.

But wildfires in California is not where this hellscape ends.

Wildfires have been burning in Oregon’s Bootleg Fire for six days straight, scorching more than 150 000 acres as of Monday morning and disrupting critical electricity infrastructure.

The horror has culminated in the occurrence of more and more “firenadoes”.

These fire weather phenomenons are also known as fire tornadoes, fire twisters, or fire devils.

They’re also sometimes called fire whirls, though some meteorologists reserve that term for smaller fire weather occurrences.

California witnessed its second firenado in three weeks over the weekend, showing the severity of the fires burning in the state this year:

The Beckwourth Complex, made up of two lightning-caused fires on the east edge of the Plumas National Forest, north of Lake Tahoe, doubled in size late last week and became the state’s largest fire of 2021 at nearly 90 000 acres [364,21 square kilometres] as of Monday morning.

On Saturday, the flames also whipped up a firenado.

A firefighter posted this to Instagram:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by @cv__zach

More footage shot on June 29 of the Tennant fire in California shows a fire tornado near the Klamath national forest:

Looks like hell is a place on Earth, after all.

Firenadoes occur when large wildfires superheat the air, causing it to rise:

As the [air] rises, it cools and condenses in the upper reaches of the atmosphere, creating unstable conditions and a clash of air that can cause firenadoes to form.

Here’s geologist Dr Pat Abbott explaining it on CBS 8 San Diego:

South Africa saw its own firenado when fires blazed around the southern Cape, devastating much of Knysna, in 2018.

Clearly, if we don’t do more to curb fossil fuel usage and greenhouse gas emissions to reverse the effects of climate change, extreme heat and fire behaviour will become the new normal.

[source:gizmodo]