Fires are creating weather in Rio Blanco County where wildfire is creating a firestorm.

Rio Blanco County

The Lee Fire in Rio Blanco County, Colorado, has intensified to the point of generating its own weather system, a phenomenon known as a firestorm. Meteorologist Stacy Donaldson explained that the intense heat from the fire is creating strong updrafts and downdrafts, leading to erratic fire behavior and the formation of pyrocumulus clouds, which can produce lightning.

These conditions have resulted in high winds that can spread the fire further and have even led to the formation of firenadoes—tornado-like vortices of fire. The instability and extreme heat associated with the firestorm are making firefighting efforts more challenging and increasing the danger in the affected area.

Rio Blanco County wildfire creates a firestorm

I'm meteorologist Stacy Donaldson and we have a couple of fires burning here in Colorado, one specifically the Lee Fire. We've had reports that it's causing its own weather and I wanted to point out what exactly that means when we talk about a fire creating its own weather system. And it's called a firestorm and this is when intense heat starts to create the elements that we see in weather scenarios. It's got a lot of heat creating strong updrafts and downdrafts and then the fire becomes very erratic and we can have lightning with these storms. We can have condensation with the clouds going up to 30,000 feet and you can really see it here as the heat from the fire bubbles up in the center of this column of smoke. It then punches up into the higher levels of the atmosphere around 30,000 feet and this is where we start to see pyrocumulus clouds. And this is where those clouds start to condense and then they create lightning. They can create updrafts and downdrafts and that's the really dangerous part here because we already have the instability and the heat with the fire. Those strong updrafts going in and downdrafts coming out create high winds and can push the fire even farther than it would normally go. And then we also see firenadoes as well and this is when we start to see the tilt in those updrafts and downdrafts and all of that instability really starting to intensify what's going on within the fire system. And we can see this strong scenario here where we see actual tornadoes made from fire.

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