Monster clouds towering 40,000 feet over Mosquito Fire in California stun scientists

Fire clouds that reached altitudes of up to 40,000 feet over the Mosquito Fire in Northern California over the past week have left scientists in awe.

“It really hit everybody in the plane pretty hard just how massive and destructive the fire was,” Alan Brewer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told SFGate after flying past the smoke plume.

“It was like flying right alongside the wall of the Grand Canyon,” Brewer said, according to the outlet.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and U.S. Forest Service officials say the fire, which started near Oxbow Reservoir in the Tahoe National Forest on Tuesday, Sept. 6, is now 10% contained, The Sacramento Bee reported.

The fire has torn through 41,443 acres, or 64.8 square miles, in El Dorado and Placer counties, and threatens more than 5,000 homes and other buildings.

”More than 11,000 residents remain evacuated, officials said, as the fire grew by about 7,700 acres in a day”, The Sacramento Bee reported.

Pyrocumulus clouds, also known as fire clouds or flammagenitus clouds, are created when wildfires or volcanoes are so hot they create their own weather, according to the World Meteorological Association.

“A big fire produces strong upward moving air currents that carry water vapor and ash upward,” The Weather Guys website said. “The water vapor can condense on the ash forming cloud drops.”

When pyrocumulus clouds pull enough water into the air, they can cause thunderstorms. Most pyrocumulus clouds top out around 30,000 feet, according to The Weather Guys.

Animations of radar results posted on Twitter by Neil Lareau, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Nevada, Reno, show two plumes hitting nearly 40,000 feet as the blaze jumped a river toward Volcanoville on Thursday, Sept. 8.

Onlookers from miles away saw the towering pyrocumulus clouds and the NOAA Air Operations Center posted photos from its flyby on Twitter.

On Friday, Sept. 9, no cloud formed because of a shift in the weather, SFGate reported.

This story was originally published September 11, 2022 at 12:32 PM with the headline "Monster clouds towering 40,000 feet over Mosquito Fire in California stun scientists."