France Records Its First-Ever Pyrocumulonimbus Cloud Amid Record-Smashing Fires
Firefighters in France are confronting a phenomenon never seen in the region before: fire clouds. It’s a sign of the intensity of the blazes burning—and how climate change is upping the odds that they appear.
A wave of fires has swept over France and Spain, sending hundreds of thousands fleeing. Firefighters on the frontlines are facing what a spokesperson for the French firefighter association told AFP called an “operational impossibility”—in other words, a “natural force beyond our control.”
As evidence of how out of control the wildfires in France are, look no further than the skies where the blazes have, in some cases, created their own weather. To form a fire cloud—what meteorologists call a pyrocumulonimbus or the even more metal-sounding cumulonimbus flammagenitus—you first need heat, which fires have in spades.
But just as important are dry conditions near the ground and cool, relatively moist conditions aloft in the...
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