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California 'fire tornado' had 143 mph winds, possibly state's strongest twister ever
| well over 100 miles south of Redding — was significant.
"I’ve never seen anything like that in my career," said Keeton, who has been with the weather service since 1985.
Also known as a fire whirl or firenado, the weather service described it as "a rotating column of fire induced by intense rising heat and turbulent winds. Intense fire whirls can be violent and cause damage similar to tornadoes."
| Fire tornadoes range in size from less than 1 foot as much as 500 feet in diameter, the Bureau of Land Management said.
"Depending on the final number, this might actually be the strongest ‘tornado’ in California history, even if it wasn’t formally a tornado," UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain told the Los Angeles Times.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2018/08/03/fire-tornado-california-carr-fire-143-mph-winds/897835002/
| These yearly wildfires are getting ridiculous.
| It really feels like the weather's only going to get worse from here on out.
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| The devastating fire tornado that spun up during the Carr Fire last week had 143 mph winds, according to a preliminary report from the National Weather Service Thursday. This is equal to an EF-3 tornado on the five-level Enhanced Fujita Scale.
Dan Keeton, the meteorologist-in-charge at the National Weather Service in Sacramento, said the fact that the weather service was able to see the rotation of the 35,000-foot-tall plume on its radar —