Watch at this eerie fire devil swirling from the ground!
This 100-foot-high fire tornado was recorded by Chris Tangey near Alice Springs, Australia.
A “fire devil” builds up when a very hot patch of ground sends up a plume of heated air. The heat source arises from hot spots in preexisting wildfires.
As the vortex rises and sucks the blaze up with it, its diameter begins to shrink and its rotation accelerates.
Since the “fire devils” are rarely recorded, no much is known about the phenomenon.
Their height and rotation velocities may go up to a hundred feet (30 m) and respectively 22 miles per hour (35.4 kilometers per hour).
Since much of our knowledge on tornado was gained from the analysis of footages recorded by storm chasers, this movie might help scientists to uncover the mysteries of “fire tornadoes”.
[…] These are rare but have been caught elsewhee as shown in the following links (USA and Australia). […]
[…] eddies of turbulence, which can get amplified into the vortices seen in the video (and also in fire tornadoes which are also seriously a thing). But still, […]