The fire that devastated a Sierra town created a pyrocumulus cloud. Pyrocumulonimbus clouds - as well as pyrocumulus clouds, which are similar but do not produce thunderstorms - tend to rise in the afternoon when it is hottest and can pose an additional danger when they fall as things cool off. “Yesterday, our operations staff was reporting spotting about a mile ahead of the main head of the fire,” Cox said. So-called pyrocumulonimbus clouds can, in turn, make the fire spread even faster - in addition to lightning, they can create erratic, ember-spitting winds. Such intensity, combined with hot, dry, unstable conditions, can generate a thunderstorm cloud, as the fire did Friday afternoon, when the incident meteorologist observed cloud-to-cloud lightning, Cox said. “Basically, it just runs across the trees until it runs out of trees. “That increases the velocity of the spread of the fire because the fire’s actually moving amongst the treetops,” she said. “As long as it’s this hot and we have these low humidities, it’s kind of hard to tell when and where we’re going to catch this,” said Lisa Cox, information officer for the Beckwourth Complex fires.įire crews were seeing flare-ups in groups of trees and spot fires ignited by far-flung embers as flames tore through timber stands, she said.
About 2,800 people remained under evacuation orders or warnings, officials said.įirefighters were bracing for another day of extreme conditions amid even hotter temperatures.ADVERTISING The Washoe County evacuations were lifted Saturday but residents were advised to stay vigilant.
The other, the Dotta fire, started June 30 and was 670 acres and 80% contained by early Saturday.įueled by a midweek heat wave that exacerbated already hot, dry conditions, the Sugar fire made a huge run Friday, triggering new evacuations for portions of Plumas and Lassen counties, as well as part of Washoe County, Nev. The fire, now the state’s largest of the season, was one of two sparked by lightning in the Plumas National Forest that have together been dubbed the Beckwourth Complex fires. The Sugar fire, which ignited July 2, had spread to 54,421 acres and was 8% contained as of Saturday morning. Smoke and fire rise above Frenchman Lake as the Sugar fire, part of the Beckwourth Complex, burns in Plumas National Forest on Thursday. (Noah Berger / Associated Press)By ALEX WIGGLESWORTHSTAFF WRITER JUPDATED 4:27 PM PTĪ wildfire in Northern California more than doubled in size from Friday to Saturday, sending up a massive cloud of smoke and ash that, combined with the dry heat, generated its own lightning and created dangerous weather conditions for firefighters, authorities said.
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