Like volcanic eruptions, some fires grow large enough to make their own weather with the heat being released acting like convection. Witness this neat time lapse in HD showing the “Station” fire in the Angeles National Forest.
This video was made by photographer Brandon Riza on August 30th, 2009. It is quite well done and quite visually stunning. The station fire is also visible from space, and shows up in the AIRS satellite image shown below from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
It is also visible by conventional satellite imagery.
For those interested, here is more information about pyrocumulus clouds.
h/t to “jeez” for the time lapse video
pyrocumulus—A pyrocumulus or fire cloud is a dense cumuliform cloud associated with fire or volcanic activity.
A pyrocumulus cloud is produced by the intense heating of the air from the surface. The intense heat induces convection which causes the air mass to rise to a point of stability, usually in the presence of moisture. Phenomena such as volcanic eruptions, forest fires, and occasionally industrial activities can induce formation of this cloud. The detonation of a nuclear weapon in the atmosphere will also produce a pyrocumulus in the form of a mushroom cloud which is made by the same mechanism. The presence of a low level jet stream can enhance its formation. Condensation of ambient moisture (moisture already present in the atmosphere) as well as moisture evaporated from burnt vegetation or volcanic outgassing occurs readily on particles of ash.
A pyrocumulus cloud from the August 2009 Station fire in southern California
Pyrocumulus cloud viewed from above
Pyrocumuli contain severe turbulence which also results in strong gusts at the surface which can exacerbate a large conflagration. A large pyrocumulus, particularly one associated with a volcanic eruption, may also produce lightning. This is a process not fully understood as of yet, but is probably in some way associated with charge separation induced by severe turbulence, and perhaps, by the nature of the particles of ash in the cloud. Large pyrocumuli can contain temperatures well below freezing, and the electrostatic properties of any ice that forms may also play a role. A pyrocumulus which produces lightning is actually a type of cumulonimbus, a thundercloud and is called pyrocumulonimbus.
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Thanks for the science lesson.
They are very turbulent. I was flying to Canberra from Melbourne in January 2004 and followed a great wall of fire and descended to Canberra AP through the PC top and it was a very rough ride. The PC is deceiving as looks like it contains rain, but during these events the humidity drops to alarmingly low levels, in fact very low humidity is a good indicator of trouble ahead.
The next day the fires moved into western Canberra and 500 homes and many lives were lost.
Athens has had its fires,California with all its surveillance equipment was not able to spot these outbreaks early enough to stop them. Our turn will come again this summer with arson a likely cause in all three countries.
Why not really detect these events early say with infra red detectors, get in quickly with water bombers,stop the spread,treat it like a war on arson and contain it early.
Letting them burn only gives pleasure to those who started them and makes the first world countries look impotent.
I fly for a large airline and on August 25 I was flying a turn from KLAS to KSNA. We crossed over Big Bear and flying directly to Homeland, a military base in the LAX area. I looked to the right of the aircraft and noticed a small puff of smoke eminating from the ridge on the northern side of the LA Basin. I didn’t pay much attention until we began our arrival into KSNA. The elasped time was approximately 2 minutes. When I looked at that area again, I was surprised to see how large the fire had become. I reported the fire to the local controller. He acknowledge he was not aware of any fire in that location. We arrived at KSNA and left approximately one hour later. As we began our trip back to KLAS, I was shocked to see how large the fire had gotten. I knew this was going to be a huge fire but I had no idea that it would be this devastating. In my career, I have seen several large forest fires from the air. My deepest condolences go to the families of the lost fire fighters. This fire is one for the record books. However, it did have to be this way. Although this is my opinion, proper forest management practices or the lack thereof created this devastating fire in the Los Angeles and surronding areas The residents of this area sould demand an answer from their congressmen.
Yous,
Capt Bill
A little correction in my last post.
It should read,
However, it did not have to be this way.
Yours,
Capt. Bill
I still remember the “old days” when there were regular fire breaks bulldozed into the mountain brush. That was before thev
darkgreen times.I suppose even things of violent destruction can have their own beauty.
I also note that arson has been intimated as a cause for these fires. My own H.O. would not place these actions beyond those extreme deviants within the AGW camp, thus providing physical evidence to all of the hot, dry AGW conditions being caused. I also note that from a previous post, Australia’s hot temps were NOT caused by AGW/CC. However, it is reassuring to note that they are wrong, from this morning’s BBC Radio 2 news broadcast @ur momisugly 06:00 hrs it was caused by AGW/CC. It is nice to know that in times of change some things remain consistant! I advise that over here in Disneyland, human induced CC is mentioned somewhere on the BBC almost daily. All it will need, is for something dramatic to occur with respect to the Sun & its (non) relationship with Earth, eg for a bitterly cold winter, for the indepentent broadcasters to pick it up & run with it, then the BBC will have to say something about it.
These firefighters are heroes…
“Alan the Brit (01:59:11) :
I also note that from a previous post, Australia’s hot temps were NOT caused by AGW/CC. ”
The problem is the title of the report, “Climate records broken”, will be highlighted by the media, in a frenzy in AGW dogma, while the underlying fact, “The outlook for the coming spring suggests that above average temperatures are likely across the whole of Australia. This is a result of recent warm conditions in the Indian Ocean as well as warming in the Pacific.”, will be lost unfortunately.
“Flanagan (02:45:22) :
These firefighters are heroes…”
And those promoting AGW, carbon offsets, taxes, the IPCC, media alarmism (The media have been “preaching” climatic doom since the late 19th century btw) are criminals and should be placed in gaol.
I was ~12 miles down wind of the Pinitubo eruption and spent the entire eruption outside in rescue efforts. The lightning strikes were frequent and came about every 5 minutes at the height of the ash fall. The lightning was a bright red. Most violent display of nature I have ever seen.
The eruption took place during a major storm. It totally displaced the rain clouds for the duration of the eruption.
Flanagan (02:45:22) :
These firefighters are heroes…
Oh, yes indeed. Risking their lives to save property belonging to others. A task which (sometimes) is an exercise in both futility and thanklessness. Our firefighters (in Autralia and elsewhere) deserve the utmost respect and support.
But in Australia, I treasure most the civilian volunteer forces, the people who just get things done.
True heroes.
Firestorms have been discussed since WWII, particularly following the fire bombing of Tokyo and the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The surface winds are ferocious.
I don’t remember if Dresden produced one or not.
Who pays for the carbon credits?
Correct me I’m wrong – I spend alot of time there on various issues. Alot of these Enviro-Nuts that STILL believe that CO2 will cause the end of the World and cover the land in Ocean are members of other Enviro-Nut groups like the Sierra Club that forbit removing downed trees, branches and other fodder to preserve the natural ecosystem. Others in the failing (bankrupt) CA government system that want to promote “Green Technologies” could bolster employment, tax receipts and fight unemployment by allowing this fire fodder removal efforts. If it wasn’t outlawed, private groups would probably jump in and find economic uses for the wood.
Therefore the only question that can be raised is: Does the Sierra Club and CA Government ever accept or claim any partial responsibility when CA Wildfires burn out of control? I have a strong feeling they are nowhere to be found as the loss of life and property would be a HUGE liability that is currently foisted (sp?) off on EVIL Insurance companies. Furthermore, it can be conveniently blamed on EVIL CO2 Emitting Business that cause global warming, that makes the sun shine, that makes the forests dry – it’s not our fault for poor land management, right?
Again, that’s just what popped up when I saw all that smoke arising. Damned Eco-Nuts screwed us again. There should be a responsible Environmental Movement that requires IQ’s above 80 in it’s memberships that spouts out sensible conservation, management and (gasp) positions that would help sustain the Planet and denounces all the current ECo-Nuts – does anyone know if such?
The technology already exists (and has for decades) the issue is one of the administrative overhead to run such a system. I worked for the Office of Emergency Management in Colorado for 14 years. Occasionally we would get a call from the folks at NORAD advising us that there systems had detected a large fire.
In one case it was a burning barn!
The missile launch detection systems the military use include detection of the infrared signature of the motor burn on launch. We assumed that that is the means they were referring to when they detected a large fire, although obviously no one would confirm exactly how they knew.
In any case such a system would have to sort out an enormous amount of thermal noise signitures from benign activities such as fire department training burns, crash rescue training burns, permitted fires for brush control and wild land management, not to mention hundreds of large structure fires every day across the country.
In most cases by the time such information works its way down the notification tree to the state level the locals were already working the fire, because the smoke plume gave it away.
The problem with wild land fire response is frequently a problem of logistics not detection. You can get phone in reports of a wild fire within minutes of ignition, but it might take 30 min to 2 hours to get a warm body on scene to evaluate and begin suppression simply due to the travel times. Even when the air tankers are under hot standby during severe fire danger their flight time, might make the fire uncontrollable by the time they can put the first slurry drop on the fire front.
Many people forget about the distances involved in these activities. During our extreme fire season a few years ago, I lived right on the flight path of the slurry bombers as they cycled from the fire areas to the Jeffco slurry facility where they refilled the planes with slurry for the drops. I could set my watch by the cycle of the bombers. One of them the PB4Y ( http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4191/is_20020720/ai_n10006430/ ) the pilot would literally fly directly over my house on each run as he used North Table Mountain near my home as a landmark. On the way out I would hear him clawing for altitude and speed with a full load of slurry as he came over the house, then about 20 minutes later he would roar over the house running hot and empty going back for a refill.
Larry
Larry
A fleet of these would reduce wildfires to manageble levels.
http://telstarlogistics.typepad.com/telstarlogistics/2007/10/dc-10-water-bom.html
Worse, the US Forest Service’s jitters and red tape have effectively killed an even bigger firefighting aircraft, a Boeing 747 Supertanker that was converted into a water-bomber capable of dropping 24,000 gallons of retardant — twice as much as even Tanker 910. Here’s a video of the 747 Supertanker making a test drop:
LINK
After the feds declined to sign on as a customer for the 747, Evergreen effectively shut down the Supertanker program earlier this year. So while Southern California burns, the most powerful firefighting tool in the world may be gathering dust just a few hundred miles away. CORRECTION: The Evergreen 747 Supertanker has been converted back for use as a freighter — but it retains its firefighting paint job. Here’s how the Supertanker looked on September 1, 2007 while hauling freight in Ireland:
When the flames are finally out in Southern California, Telstar Logistics hopes there will be a lot of tough questions asked about how well the federal government’s policy toward Tanker 910 and the 747 Supertanker serves the interests of California’s citizens. The mainstream media has taken notice before. Will they do so again?
Dave D (06:54:01) : So there are too many “eco-nuts” over there?. However they have not succeeded in reestablishing real ecology (the equilibrium of all local species) as to, for example, have enough pumas near their houses to feed on the excess of these “eco-nuts”. You should encourage the massive reproduction of pumas in special “farms” and then, after having the appropiate quantity of these, to liberate them in selected eco-friends neighbourhoods.
Very sorry to be off topic but I can’t post where this one belongs.
They are discussing the surface station project over at Skeptical Science
http://www.skepticalscience.com/
This is a very pro AGW site but the tone is not bad and the folks their are not dishonest like you see at a certain well known site. However, there is an almost willful lack of understanding with regard to what the project shows and I thought perhaps some here would like to comment.
They are not skeptical about any catastrophic global warming view but other than that it is worth a look and a comment.
Roger Derby (05:26:04) :
Firestorms have been discussed since WWII, particularly following the fire bombing of Tokyo and the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The surface winds are ferocious.
I don’t remember if Dresden produced one or not.
Dresden did indeed produce a firestorm. Due to the influx of refugees, the total dead will never be known, but some German sources place the dead at over 300,000. Way more than is commonly cited.
Really glad someone got some time-lapsed video of this. We’ve spent the past week on the north side of this fire under that cloud. Scary stuff.
Amazing photography. Speeded up, it looks just like a volcano.
At the time of the last “good” war, World War II, 12,000 men refused induction into the military,, were classified IV-E (conscientious Objectors), and assigned to Civilian Public Service for “work of national importance under civilian direction.\” Of that tiny minority (less than 1 percent of those drafted), nearly 40 percent were Mennonites, 11 percent Brethren, 7 percent Friends, 6 percent Methodists, and the rest represented more than 200 sects or denominations.
Most of todays objectors really don’t want to serve the country.
Forrest fighters today include prisoners to fight fires.
I live in the right hand side of the satellite photo. We have a picture perfect view of the San Bernadino mountains. It’s been a wild week up there.
My property burned in the year 2000 Pechanga Fire, before I developed it. It was a blessing, actually. After the fires of two years ago, which were driven by Santa Ana winds, I’ve gotten serious about fire abatement. ( We had $1200 dollars worth of damage done to our tile roof in that wind event.) My house is on a knoll and I’ve got a fire break road around it and have been culling out the chamise brush within the firebreak. I’ve also surrounded it with drystack stone walls and a lot of large rocks that were dislodged during grading. Fire abatement is a lot of work, especially when you’ve got four acres to care for. (We are zoned for four acre limited agriculture.) You leave the manzanita, toyon, scrub oaks, laurel sumac, sage and other plants that grow in the chaparral, but remove the chamise, which is a small piny bush.
We have a gated community of mostly small ranches. Maybe 65 homes. The people who own large properties that they had once hoped to develop are not now able to subdivide because we only have one ingress/egress route and the closest fire department is 15 miles away. It’s a dead end development, in an unincorporated area, although I can get out in two other directions with a four wheel drive. Fire regulation, environmental regulation, and the generally outrageous expense of building has combined with a dip in property values to put a near halt to new construction around here, which is in the northernmost part of San Diego County. Only a small portion of my development burned in the 2000, which means the majority of it hasn’t burned in 60 years. It’s going to be hell when it happens, since there is a lot of rough terrain.
The Number of Airtankers available to the Feds were reduced due to the Hawkins and Powers fiasco of afew years ago the old C-130s and PB4Ys were grounded,that H&P
operated due to wing faliure.But they Grounded all “old’ Airtankers to Fed fires and CDF went along.Proper maintenance like Spar xrays were not even considered.So
all the Four Engine Douglases, and the C130’s were done.Oregon still operates DC6’s and 7’s on contract.Nothing is out there except the DC10 and 747,the Feds really want is:C-130H’s in numerical order lined up on the Ramp at Missoula, working 0730 to 1830 monday thru friday.Private contractors(like my former employer-Butler Aircraft) have played by the rules for years, and in some cases gave it all to fight fire,have been shunted aside.Yet California called the Martin Mars from Canada,and Conair from Canada-Flying DC6’S!!!The Mars is a good airplane but, it was built in 1943! the Conair 6’s were 1948-53. Indeed something is wrong
with this picture.
Nogw (07:55:24) : I actually live in TN, but your comments are right on the mark! I’ve borrowed Eco-Nuts or Enviro-Nuts from the “Land of Fruits and Nuts” nomenclature sometimes reserved for the “Left Coast” or specifically CA. Your insight reminds me of the Ice Cutter that was rented by a bunch Environmentalists to “document” the NW passage clearing in the shrinking Arctic a few years back and got stuck in and then, on the ice for several days. I think it was like a Mega Cutter, too, one of the 3 largest in existence! The only way the real storie could have been more ironic is if some enterprising local (do people live there???) had stampeded a “herd” of Polar Bears onto the ship. What with their disappearing food sources and the Environmentalist’s guilt for their shrinking population, this would have allowed these “environmentalists” to contribute directly to “solving the problem”!