Wildfire is so big, it's forming mushroom clouds and weather

 

Deadly Carr Fire burns in California

• begin quote from:
• 

  LIVE UPDATES

  Wildfire is so big, it's forming mushroom clouds and weather

• 2 hr 37 min ago

  What you need to know about the mushroom-shaped clouds appearing over the Carr Fire

  From CNN's Judson Jones and Brandon Miller
  

  A large pyrocumulus cloud explodes outward during the Carr Fire near Redding, California, on July 27.JOSH EDELSON/AFP/Getty Images

  The Carr Fire raging in Northern California is so large and hot that it is creating rare mushroom-cloud like formations known as pyrocumulus clouds — which are basically its own localized weather system.

  Here's how they form: Normal cumulus clouds form because the sun's rays heat the ground, forming warm air that rises because it is less dense than the cooler air above. As it rises, the air cools and condenses to form the cloud.

  During a wildfire, however, the extreme heat from the flames forces air to rapidly rise. As the fire burns trees and other plant life it causes the water inside them to evaporate into the rising air. This additional moisture in the atmosphere condenses in the cooler air above, on smoke particles also produced by the fire.

  They don't just look like thunderstorms — they act like them, too: The clouds can produce lightning and cause the winds to gust and blow in different directions, CNN meteorologist Brandon Miller says.

  Sometimes they even contain enough moisture to become a pyrocumulonimbus — another way of saying a cumulus cloud that produces rain. The rain that falls from a pyrocumulonimbus cloud sometimes can put out the same fire that created the cloud initially.

  Here's what it looks like on satellite: