Wildfires in Utah and Arizona, near the Grand Canyon, are producing “fire clouds” that can be seen for hundreds of miles and further fuel the fires.
The Dragon Bravo fire near the Grand Canyon has become the largest wildfire in the continental U.S. this year, consuming 111,000 acres and destroying the historic lodge at Grand Canyon National Park.
The fire is only nine percent contained, as extreme heat and strong winds continue to fuel the blaze, according to the latest update.
Both it and the Monroe Fire, burning further north near Monroe, Utah, are generating pyrocumulus clouds — sometimes called “fire clouds” — that form when air over a fire becomes superheated and rises in large, smoky columns.
The massive clouds are visible for hundreds of miles and resemble the shape of an anvil.
The fires can also generate pyrocumulonimbus clouds, which trigger thunderstorms, and may further fuel the wildfires.
“If they get high enough, they can also create downdrafts, and that’s something we really watch out for because that can quickly spread the fire and can be very dangerous for firefighters who are doing their work on the ground,” Lisa Jennings, a spokesperson for the Southwest Area Incident Management Team, told CBS News.
Several fire crews battling the Monroe fire were forced to pull back on Wednesday when fire clouds created dangerous conditions on the ground.
“Think of the fire as kind of like a hot-air balloon, so it adds buoyancy and things rise as a result,” Derek Mallia, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Utah who studies fire clouds, told CBS News.
“You get this towering thunderstorm over the fire, and just like any other thunderstorm it gets really windy underneath it. Because it’s the West, these thunderstorms tend to be very dry.”
If that’s not frightening enough, a fire tornado spun up in Utah and tore through a neighborhood with wind speeds of 122 mph, according to the National Weather Service.
Mallia said that fire clouds are likely to appear more frequently due to climate change driven by the human burning of fossil fuels. Climate change is producing longer fire seasons, drought conditions, and extreme weather events, as we’re seeing play out in the southwest.
The temperature and weather conditions in the southwest are continuing to fuel the fires and erasing the gains firefighters have made in containing the blazes.
The Dragon Bravo fire crossed a threshold recently, becoming what the U.S. Forest Service calls a “megafire.” Megafires earn that frightening title when they reach more than 100,000 acres in size.
Driving around the totality of the fire would take about as long as driving from New York to Washington, D.C.
According to fire officials, the blaze in Arizona is continuing to push north. In Utah, the Monroe fire has consumed approximately 50,000 acres and the state’s governor, Spencer Cox, said “terrible conditions” are continuing to fuel the blaze.
“These terrible conditions that are making it impossible for us to get ahead of this fire exist in every corner of the state right now,” Cox said. “It would be very easy to have more fires like this one, so we need people to be incredibly cautious.”
The Monroe fire is only seven percent contained.
