Now you might be hearing about fire tornados with the more frequent wildfires firing up across the parts of the globe. You will be familiar with the wind tornados. These fire tornados are similar in that they a whirling wind but induced by the heat of a raging fire. These fire tornados can also transport smoke and ash, and even flames of fire up though the atmosphere.
Just as (wind) tornados have a variety of names such as twister and wind devil, fire tornados have a comparable range of names including fire devil, fire whirl, fire swirl and fire twister. The fire whirl starts with a whirl of wind carrying smoke and/or ash. They occur in the vicinity of wildfires where the intense heat from the fires is caught up in the turbulent wind flows creating swirling eddies of extremely hot air. These heat eddies swirl inward on itself creating the tornado-like vortex. This vortex is like a funnel sucking up debris and burning embers, carrying along flames and even combustible gases that in turn are able to intensify the fire systems.
Generally, these are not ‘true’ tornados in that the vortex in most cases, does not extend from the land surface right up to the base of the clouds. Secondly, the vorticity is derived from surface winds and requires heat-induced lifting. In contrast, the tornados that spin off hurricane systems are driven by the tornadic cyclonic systems in the upper air streams.
The fire whirls are being observed and recognised as a phenomena with a higher occurrence rate this century than over the previous century. The occurrence of this phenomena was first recorded as far back as the 1870s in Wisconsin, USA. The frequency of the observation of these events continues to increase with sizeable and violent fire whirl was observed and recorded in the Canberra fires in Australia in 2003. The occurrence of a fire whirl was recorded in the Port Hills wildfires of Christchurch, NZ in 2017, in the Carr Fire in California in 2018.
Then in the Loyalton Fire in California and Nevada in 2020, the U.S. Weather Service issued the first-ever warning of potential risk of a fire tornado from a pyrocumulonimbus system resulting from a massive wildfire event. This was an occasion viable of producing a fire tornado. Presently, there are fire whirls observed and being recorded in the present fires in the Palisades wildfires in the Los Angeles area in 2025.
This is a growing field in pyrotechnic hazards that is extremely challenging to secure real and reliable sources of data on a very complex phenomena that is placing human life and dwellings at extremely high risk in highly dangerous conditions.