Fire Tornado

What is a fire tornado and and how dangerous is it?

There are certain conditions in which fires are formed, like when warm air and convergence are present, when such a thing takes place this fire obtains vertical vorticity and forms a funnel, or whirl that is like a tornado. This fire tornado sweeps about 10 feet wide very much like a wind tornado. Whirlwinds that is what many of these tornadoes are!

To explain how perilous a fire tornado is we would need to go back a little in time. It was in 1923 that an earthquake occurred in Great Kanto, Japan. It was this earthquake that ignited a large city-sized firestorm that in turn produced a fire tornado. Unfortunately it took the fire tornado only 15 minutes to kill 38,000 people in an area in Tokyo.

It was in California; just three years later that lightening struck an oil storage facility near San Luis Obispo. As the flame roared, it formed several small tornadoes that caused major structural damage to the facility and killed 2 people too. It was during the four-day firestorm that thousands of whirlwinds, tornadoes and firestorms formed and carried debris as far as three miles away. Fire tornadoes were in the news recently too when one was produced in South America causing major damage to Brazil and killing many people.

How do fire tornadoes take shape?

Wildfires are the starting point of most tornadoes. Tornadoes are usually present around 30 to 200 feet tall, though there have been reports of some of them being over a mile high and ten feet wide. Usually fire tornadoes do not last for more than a few minutes though there have been exceptions to the rule with some going on for more than 20 minutes too.

What do fire tornadoes look like?

A wind tornado is very much like a fire tornado, the only difference being it is made of fire instead of wind. These flames can look almost like a volcanic eruption with flames forming like the flow of lava. They vary in colors from ash and grayish to flame red and orange.

Do fire tornadoes disperse?

Yes, fire tornadoes do jump which increases the possibility of causing more wildfires to sprout.