As wildfires have sent palls of smoke streaming across large swaths of North America, some have spawned fire-breathing thunderstorm clouds.
As is evident from the image above and others that follow, these pyrocumulonimbus clouds, or pyroCbs, offer a visually dramatic reminder of just how extreme wildfire behavior can get. But they are significant for other reasons as well.
PyroCbs can hurl barrages of lightning bolts to the ground, triggering even more wildfires. They also can help spread harmful particulate pollution far and wide, and even drive smoke into the stratosphere, five to seven miles above Earth’s surface. Here, the smoke can actually influence the global climate, recent research has shown.
In the photo above, a pyroCb is seen erupting from Oregon’s Falls Fire on July 15, 2024. The blaze has produced a number of these events, including one on July 13 that up until that point was the biggest one of the summer in the western United States.
The Falls Fire ignited on July 10, 2024 in the Malheur National Forest, about 20 miles northwest of Burns, Oregon. As of today, the blaze was just 15 percent contained and had scorched 120,919 acres — an area equivalent to about two thirds the size of New York City. The fire was human-caused.
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