9 ms·

Wildfires in Canada are creating their own weather systems, experts say

143 points by colinprince 5y ago

heavyset_go 5y ago
I think it was Nova on PBS that did an episode on studying weather systems created by fires, focusing on fires on the US Pacific coast.
brailsafe 5y ago
We haven't had rain in a hilarious amount of time for the PNW, and getting more heat warnings. We're used to summers with a fairly consistent ~20° and some rain here and there. What we've been getting since mid-June is 26°+ (outside of the crazy week of over 40°). In some cases, people are literally needing to water the rainforest.
imoverclocked 5y ago
> The fire creates the storm, and then the storm creates lightning, which can cause more fires > That runaway feedback is the dangerous part. This is the second year I've heard the term pyrocumulus/pyrocumulonimbus so prominently in relation to the Sierras in California. If this happens more frequently, we might lose a lot of forest. It seems like that would accelerate the effects of climate change... which would also amplify the frequency of these events.
- bamboozled 5y ago
  Yes, this is what will happen in many areas.
- RadioactiveMan 5y ago
  Would we really lose them? My understanding is that, after a fire, a forest experiences very rich growth, especially of plants that don't grow much under the shade of old trees, which are good food and cover for many animals.
  - jszymborski 5y ago
    Right, but it takes ages for forests to grow, and that period is plenty time for CO2 emissions to run-away from us.
    - tomc1985 5y ago
      There is a small but growing movement towards controlled burns of forests and such because not burning for long enough creates conditions that make wildfires even bigger and harder to stop. If you can rotate between enough zones over time the burned area can regrow fully. It has been said that part of the reason wildfires get so bad now is because we do not let them partake in their normal cycle of burning down occasionally.
      - bawolff 5y ago
        What do you mean small but growing? This is mainstream e.g. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/safety/wildfire-status/prevention/vegetation-and-fuel-management/prescribed-burning https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/safety/wildfire-status/pr...
        s1artibartfast 5y ago
        It isn't implemented anywhere near the natural level, let alone the required levels to offset 150 years of suppression.
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      I'll lead with: yes, these fires are devastating. Ironically, if topsoil isn't sterilised or washed away, and both can and do happen with the mega fires we've been seeing, fresh growth after a wildfire can be stunningly quick. A mature forest is self-limited by the existing mature growth --- juvenile trees simply cannot get sufficient light. If mature growth is cleared, the juveniles grow quickly. It's still a slow process, and we're talking about ~30--50 years for a redwood to hit 100' or so (coast redwoods can grow to over 380' / 115m, giant sequoia are more massive but not quite so tall --- 286' / 87m. As carbon sinks, redwood, doug fir, ponderosa, and other trees common to the western coastal ranges, Sierra, and Cascades are not insignificant, but probably pale compared to bogs, swamps, wetlands, mangroves, and tropical rainforests. Thats' a general sense, though I don't have solid numbers at hand. Burning down the Sierra, Cascades, and Rockies isn't going to do us any favours. But it's still relatively modest. I'd be more concerned about tundra / permafrost melting and release, bog fires, wetlands loss, and rainforest. Unfortunately we'll likely see all of that as well.
- slownews45 5y ago
  There was much much more fire in the past. California is a terrible example if you want to show natural / historic rates of fire. I'm sure native american's burned huge quantities for lots of reasons as well?
  - beowulfey 5y ago
    If you want to make statements like this on HN, please back them up with sources.
    - hodgesrm 5y ago
      The paper cited below estimates that 1.8M hectares burned annually in California before 1800 (over 4M acres). [1] That's about how much burned in 2020. [2] [1] https://nature.berkeley.edu/stephenslab/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Stephens-et-al.-CA-fire-area-FEM-2007.pdf https://nature.berkeley.edu/stephenslab/wp-content/uploads/2... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_wildfires https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_wildfires Edit: clarity
      - dragonsky67 5y ago
        I'm wondering what type of fires these were. There is a vast difference between a forest crown wild fire, and a cooler one that mostly works burning undergrowth and leaf litter. Still fires, still covering the same amount of ground, one can destroy the forest and anything else in the vicinity, the other can help plants germinate and seeds the forest for the next period of growth.
        s1artibartfast 5y ago
        They were low intensity fires. Many areas burned every 3 years on average before 1850. These same areas haven't experienced a fire since 1900
        slownews45 5y ago
        You only get high intensity fires if you have too LITTLE fire, not too much. If you have annual burning it's not going to be high intensity. That said, even high intensity fires have pretty impressive recovery. Do you want to give me a high intensity fire from 5+ years ago? I can then show you the recovery if you want.
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  Burning forests will increase the CO₂ level, but since there is no "local global warming", the effect is diluted over the whole planet, and I'd be very surprised if the feedback effect is at all significant.
  - coliveira 5y ago
    Except that is not happening only in the NW. From Australia to Siberia to the Amazon forest, you see the same pattern.
  - cryptoz 5y ago
    > since there is no "local global warming" There is, though. Climate change has different impacts depending on where you are. Some areas are rising in temperature much much faster than others. The arctic is a good example of 'local global warming'. > I'd be very surprised if the feedback effect is at all significant Prepare to be surprised. Even if there are 1000 factors each of them only contributing .1% to the total, it is still the case that each one of the 1000 factors is significant.
    - Denvercoder9 5y ago
      You're right that some areas are impacted more by climate change, but that's not correlated with the areas that emit more CO2. In other words: local emissions don't determine local warming.
      - cryptoz 5y ago
        I really don't think that's true, or at least, it's not as clear-cut as you are asserting. There is at least healthy debate about the issue and it is definitely not a closed case of "local emissions don't determine local warming". As far as I can tell, local emissions do relate to increased local warming. Here's a source https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-carbon-dioxide-domes-affect-health/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-carbon-dioxid...
- ErikVandeWater 5y ago
  This made me go back and read about cloud seeding. I'm surprised at how controversial its efficacy is. It seems it would be simple to set up in a lab conditions that would be favorable for a cloud seeding mission in the real world (conditions where the air is moist but not precipitating). Insert the silver iodide and see how much of the water in the air condenses. Multiply it out to see how much silver iodide you would need to substantially increase rain. Test in different conditions to see the operating window for cloud seeding is. It should be noted that the benefit of cloud seeding is not necessarily increasing total rainfall in a region, but controlling where that rainfall occurs.
  - dxbydt 5y ago
    You don't need silver iodide & suchlike. You can build a simple catapult & fire drones into the cloud. The drone delivers an electric charge to the cloud. This dislodges the water which falls down as rain. This is already routine[1] [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56428984 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56428984
    - ErikVandeWater 5y ago
      The article says they are in the proof of concept stage.
      - dxbydt 5y ago
        that bbc report is from march. here's a recent update from last week. it actually works very well - lots of rain. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2021/07/21/cloud-seeding-uae-artificial-rain-drones-electricity/8040330002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2021/07/21/cloud-s... https://www.newsweek.com/dubai-creates-fake-rain-using-drones-battle-122-degree-heat-1611887 https://www.newsweek.com/dubai-creates-fake-rain-using-drone...
- jussij 5y ago
  Undoubtedly more of these positive feedback loops will identify themselves going into the future. It was only a few years back the melting of the tundra was identified as 'accelerating effect' of climate change, as that thawing permafrost releases its methane into the atmosphere.
- hodgesrm 5y ago
  > which would also amplify the frequency of these events. At least until the fuel is gone. If we don't overcome forest management practices like fire suppression, the ecosystem will simply turn over to something less vulnerable to fire. To your point it won't be the existing species like Doug Fir, Live Oak, or Jeffrey Pine.
- pvaldes 5y ago
  > we might lose a lot of forest. Not a lot, all. The ecosystem is changing towards the desert side. Forests need a minimum amount of water to sustain them. Could be replaced by arid forests, made to burn. But the humid forests will disappear or became relict. Is happening in California since several years ago.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  >which would also amplify the frequency of these events. Fire needs three things. One of them is fuel. The west coast has an abundance of fuel because for generations we have prevented fires from removing it. If we stop doing that or the fires are too overwhelming to manage the fuel will go away and the problem will solve itself. It will just be way more fiery because you're compressing say 100yr worth of fuel consumption into say a decade.
Diederich 5y ago
Y'all might already know about them, but here are some links I've collected to monitor smoke. https://fire.airnow.gov/ https://fire.airnow.gov/ https://zoom.earth/ https://zoom.earth/ https://gacc.nifc.gov/nwcc/information/firemap.aspx https://gacc.nifc.gov/nwcc/information/firemap.aspx https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#t:adv;d:2020-09-10;l:country-outline;@-121.6,45.4,8z https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#t:adv;d:2020-09-10... https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/particulates/surface/level/overlay=pm2.5/orthographic https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/particulates/surface/l...
- xrendan 5y ago
  There's also https://firesmoke.ca https://firesmoke.ca
- swader999 5y ago
  In the post above the fire kml files that plot the active fire hot spots from satellites in Google earth is hard to beat: https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/usfs/active_fire/ https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/usfs/active_fire/ You get near real time, auto refresh and very good accuracy with ability to zoom in.
- alisonatwork 5y ago
  Another useful site with a lot of different layers is the #FireMappers one. https://napsg.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=6dc469279760492d802c7ba6db45ff0e https://napsg.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?i...
- micro_cam 5y ago
  It is worth adding http://purpleair.com/ http://purpleair.com/ who produce the low cost sensors that contribute to at least the first map. They have their own map (with 80 second update intervals) and you can buy a sensor for ~$250... it is a cool product because its a super practical design (housing is a pvc pipe cap) focused on delivering an accurate sensor on the cheap. We love ours because you can watch it and see in real time when the air quality improves for a brief period.
- ehnto 5y ago
murphyslab 5y ago
The photos in CBC's article really do a terrible job of conveying the scale and terrifying beauty of pyrocumulus clouds. On June 29th, I watched a pyrocumulus cloud [0] from the Sparks Lake fire [0] about 20-25 km from where I was. It reached over the horizon shaped like a "thunderhead" or a mushroom cloud. I was in awe. One could see the shadow that it cast in the sky; the darkness gave an impression of the cloud being dense with ash. The scale of it was huge, even though the fire was just 2 days old at that point. [0] : https://i.imgur.com/C5bwGeQ.jpg https://i.imgur.com/C5bwGeQ.jpg [1] : http://bcfireinfo.for.gov.bc.ca/hprScripts/WildfireNews/OneFire.asp?ID=811 http://bcfireinfo.for.gov.bc.ca/hprScripts/WildfireNews/OneF...
- steve_adams_86 5y ago
  That's amazing, thank you. It helps to put things to scale - I've tracked that fire on maps and in smoke forecasts, but this makes it 'real' in a more interesting and like you mention, oddly terrifying but beautiful way.
- notamy 5y ago
  Beautiful, and yet incredibly terrifying.
g5095 5y ago
I've been a volunteer firefighter in Australia for 25 years, my father and his father were.. the understanding that wildfires do this is old, I remember my grandfather talking about big wildfires in his day creating their own weather. I've been noticing in the media over the last ~5 years this narrative that climate change is causing this 'horrifying new phenomena' .. no. sorry. (PS: not a climate change skeptic, totally agree with the science, just not the media in this instance)
- Swenrekcah 5y ago
  Climate change does not create the concept of a hurricane or wildfire, nor any other physical phenomenon. Nobody has said that. What it does is induce extreme phenomena more often and in more locations. Edit: by nobody I mean scientists and knowledgeable people. TV talking heads misunderstand and misrepresent everything all the time, so undoubtedly they’ll have done the same with Climate Change.
  - dragonsky67 5y ago
    Unfortunately the talking heads are what most people listen to. When they get it wrong, it allows the general public to claim the science is getting it wrong.
lumost 5y ago
Is there geological record on how stable these forests have been over the last few thousand years? I can't help but wonder if we're watching the west coast of north america shift to a more desert like climate through the PNW/BC/Sierra regions. Presumably if the burns are large enough, and the following wet season dry enough this process could occur over the course of only a few years.
- bawolff 5y ago
  Canada is a big place. Wildfires on the coast is kind of rare, but in the boreal forest its so common that there are literally species of trees whose seeds need the heat of a forest fire to germinate.
dotcommand 5y ago
Isn't this well known already? Don't small volcano eruptions create their own localized weather systems over the crater as well?
doggodaddo78 5y ago
I'm so glad I moved out of NorCal (Butte County). The West, SW, PNW, Canada and Siberia are desertifying.
- spideymans 5y ago
  I wish I could accuse you of being sensationalist.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
warglebargle 5y ago
This would be kind of cool if it wasn’t happening on a planet i live on… such a horrific feedback loop
littlestymaar 5y ago
Small note about the title: I've seen such title about “creating their own weather systems” recently in the news about different forest fire, as if it were something really special. It's not that special, every forest fire becoming big enough will do the same and it occurs quite frequently (at least on a global scale). This phenomenon is called a [Firestorm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestorm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestorm)

143 points by colinprince 5y ago

I think it was Nova on PBS that did an episode on studying weather systems created by fires, focusing on fires on the US Pacific coast.

brailsafe 5y ago

We haven't had rain in a hilarious amount of time for the PNW, and getting more heat warnings. We're used to summers with a fairly consistent ~20° and some rain here and there. What we've been getting since mid-June is 26°+ (outside of the crazy week of over 40°). In some cases, people are literally needing to water the rainforest.

imoverclocked 5y ago

> The fire creates the storm, and then the storm creates lightning, which can cause more fires > That runaway feedback is the dangerous part. This is the second year I've heard the term pyrocumulus/pyrocumulonimbus so prominently in relation to the Sierras in California. If this happens more frequently, we might lose a lot of forest. It seems like that would accelerate the effects of climate change... which would also amplify the frequency of these events.

bamboozled 5y ago
Yes, this is what will happen in many areas.
RadioactiveMan 5y ago
Would we really lose them? My understanding is that, after a fire, a forest experiences very rich growth, especially of plants that don't grow much under the shade of old trees, which are good food and cover for many animals.
- jszymborski 5y ago
  Right, but it takes ages for forests to grow, and that period is plenty time for CO2 emissions to run-away from us.
  - tomc1985 5y ago
    There is a small but growing movement towards controlled burns of forests and such because not burning for long enough creates conditions that make wildfires even bigger and harder to stop. If you can rotate between enough zones over time the burned area can regrow fully. It has been said that part of the reason wildfires get so bad now is because we do not let them partake in their normal cycle of burning down occasionally.
    - bawolff 5y ago
      What do you mean small but growing? This is mainstream e.g. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/safety/wildfire-status/prevention/vegetation-and-fuel-management/prescribed-burning https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/safety/wildfire-status/pr...
      - s1artibartfast 5y ago
        It isn't implemented anywhere near the natural level, let alone the required levels to offset 150 years of suppression.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    I'll lead with: yes, these fires are devastating. Ironically, if topsoil isn't sterilised or washed away, and both can and do happen with the mega fires we've been seeing, fresh growth after a wildfire can be stunningly quick. A mature forest is self-limited by the existing mature growth --- juvenile trees simply cannot get sufficient light. If mature growth is cleared, the juveniles grow quickly. It's still a slow process, and we're talking about ~30--50 years for a redwood to hit 100' or so (coast redwoods can grow to over 380' / 115m, giant sequoia are more massive but not quite so tall --- 286' / 87m. As carbon sinks, redwood, doug fir, ponderosa, and other trees common to the western coastal ranges, Sierra, and Cascades are not insignificant, but probably pale compared to bogs, swamps, wetlands, mangroves, and tropical rainforests. Thats' a general sense, though I don't have solid numbers at hand. Burning down the Sierra, Cascades, and Rockies isn't going to do us any favours. But it's still relatively modest. I'd be more concerned about tundra / permafrost melting and release, bog fires, wetlands loss, and rainforest. Unfortunately we'll likely see all of that as well.
slownews45 5y ago
There was much much more fire in the past. California is a terrible example if you want to show natural / historic rates of fire. I'm sure native american's burned huge quantities for lots of reasons as well?
- beowulfey 5y ago
  If you want to make statements like this on HN, please back them up with sources.
  - hodgesrm 5y ago
    The paper cited below estimates that 1.8M hectares burned annually in California before 1800 (over 4M acres). [1] That's about how much burned in 2020. [2] [1] https://nature.berkeley.edu/stephenslab/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Stephens-et-al.-CA-fire-area-FEM-2007.pdf https://nature.berkeley.edu/stephenslab/wp-content/uploads/2... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_wildfires https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_wildfires Edit: clarity
    - dragonsky67 5y ago
      I'm wondering what type of fires these were. There is a vast difference between a forest crown wild fire, and a cooler one that mostly works burning undergrowth and leaf litter. Still fires, still covering the same amount of ground, one can destroy the forest and anything else in the vicinity, the other can help plants germinate and seeds the forest for the next period of growth.
      - s1artibartfast 5y ago
        They were low intensity fires. Many areas burned every 3 years on average before 1850. These same areas haven't experienced a fire since 1900
      - slownews45 5y ago
        You only get high intensity fires if you have too LITTLE fire, not too much. If you have annual burning it's not going to be high intensity. That said, even high intensity fires have pretty impressive recovery. Do you want to give me a high intensity fire from 5+ years ago? I can then show you the recovery if you want.
BurningFrog 5y ago
Burning forests will increase the CO₂ level, but since there is no "local global warming", the effect is diluted over the whole planet, and I'd be very surprised if the feedback effect is at all significant.
- coliveira 5y ago
  Except that is not happening only in the NW. From Australia to Siberia to the Amazon forest, you see the same pattern.
- cryptoz 5y ago
  > since there is no "local global warming" There is, though. Climate change has different impacts depending on where you are. Some areas are rising in temperature much much faster than others. The arctic is a good example of 'local global warming'. > I'd be very surprised if the feedback effect is at all significant Prepare to be surprised. Even if there are 1000 factors each of them only contributing .1% to the total, it is still the case that each one of the 1000 factors is significant.
  - Denvercoder9 5y ago
    You're right that some areas are impacted more by climate change, but that's not correlated with the areas that emit more CO2. In other words: local emissions don't determine local warming.
    - cryptoz 5y ago
      I really don't think that's true, or at least, it's not as clear-cut as you are asserting. There is at least healthy debate about the issue and it is definitely not a closed case of "local emissions don't determine local warming". As far as I can tell, local emissions do relate to increased local warming. Here's a source https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-carbon-dioxide-domes-affect-health/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-carbon-dioxid...
ErikVandeWater 5y ago
This made me go back and read about cloud seeding. I'm surprised at how controversial its efficacy is. It seems it would be simple to set up in a lab conditions that would be favorable for a cloud seeding mission in the real world (conditions where the air is moist but not precipitating). Insert the silver iodide and see how much of the water in the air condenses. Multiply it out to see how much silver iodide you would need to substantially increase rain. Test in different conditions to see the operating window for cloud seeding is. It should be noted that the benefit of cloud seeding is not necessarily increasing total rainfall in a region, but controlling where that rainfall occurs.
- dxbydt 5y ago
  You don't need silver iodide & suchlike. You can build a simple catapult & fire drones into the cloud. The drone delivers an electric charge to the cloud. This dislodges the water which falls down as rain. This is already routine[1] [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56428984 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56428984
  - ErikVandeWater 5y ago
    The article says they are in the proof of concept stage.
    - dxbydt 5y ago
      that bbc report is from march. here's a recent update from last week. it actually works very well - lots of rain. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2021/07/21/cloud-seeding-uae-artificial-rain-drones-electricity/8040330002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2021/07/21/cloud-s... https://www.newsweek.com/dubai-creates-fake-rain-using-drones-battle-122-degree-heat-1611887 https://www.newsweek.com/dubai-creates-fake-rain-using-drone...
jussij 5y ago
Undoubtedly more of these positive feedback loops will identify themselves going into the future. It was only a few years back the melting of the tundra was identified as 'accelerating effect' of climate change, as that thawing permafrost releases its methane into the atmosphere.
hodgesrm 5y ago
> which would also amplify the frequency of these events. At least until the fuel is gone. If we don't overcome forest management practices like fire suppression, the ecosystem will simply turn over to something less vulnerable to fire. To your point it won't be the existing species like Doug Fir, Live Oak, or Jeffrey Pine.
pvaldes 5y ago
> we might lose a lot of forest. Not a lot, all. The ecosystem is changing towards the desert side. Forests need a minimum amount of water to sustain them. Could be replaced by arid forests, made to burn. But the humid forests will disappear or became relict. Is happening in California since several years ago.
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
>which would also amplify the frequency of these events. Fire needs three things. One of them is fuel. The west coast has an abundance of fuel because for generations we have prevented fires from removing it. If we stop doing that or the fires are too overwhelming to manage the fuel will go away and the problem will solve itself. It will just be way more fiery because you're compressing say 100yr worth of fuel consumption into say a decade.

Diederich 5y ago

Y'all might already know about them, but here are some links I've collected to monitor smoke. https://fire.airnow.gov/ https://fire.airnow.gov/ https://zoom.earth/ https://zoom.earth/ https://gacc.nifc.gov/nwcc/information/firemap.aspx https://gacc.nifc.gov/nwcc/information/firemap.aspx https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#t:adv;d:2020-09-10;l:country-outline;@-121.6,45.4,8z https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#t:adv;d:2020-09-10... https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/particulates/surface/level/overlay=pm2.5/orthographic https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/particulates/surface/l...

xrendan 5y ago
There's also https://firesmoke.ca https://firesmoke.ca
swader999 5y ago
In the post above the fire kml files that plot the active fire hot spots from satellites in Google earth is hard to beat: https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/usfs/active_fire/ https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/usfs/active_fire/ You get near real time, auto refresh and very good accuracy with ability to zoom in.
alisonatwork 5y ago
Another useful site with a lot of different layers is the #FireMappers one. https://napsg.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=6dc469279760492d802c7ba6db45ff0e https://napsg.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?i...
micro_cam 5y ago
It is worth adding http://purpleair.com/ http://purpleair.com/ who produce the low cost sensors that contribute to at least the first map. They have their own map (with 80 second update intervals) and you can buy a sensor for ~$250... it is a cool product because its a super practical design (housing is a pvc pipe cap) focused on delivering an accurate sensor on the cheap. We love ours because you can watch it and see in real time when the air quality improves for a brief period.
ehnto 5y ago

murphyslab 5y ago

The photos in CBC's article really do a terrible job of conveying the scale and terrifying beauty of pyrocumulus clouds. On June 29th, I watched a pyrocumulus cloud [0] from the Sparks Lake fire [0] about 20-25 km from where I was. It reached over the horizon shaped like a "thunderhead" or a mushroom cloud. I was in awe. One could see the shadow that it cast in the sky; the darkness gave an impression of the cloud being dense with ash. The scale of it was huge, even though the fire was just 2 days old at that point. [0] : https://i.imgur.com/C5bwGeQ.jpg https://i.imgur.com/C5bwGeQ.jpg [1] : http://bcfireinfo.for.gov.bc.ca/hprScripts/WildfireNews/OneFire.asp?ID=811 http://bcfireinfo.for.gov.bc.ca/hprScripts/WildfireNews/OneF...

steve_adams_86 5y ago
That's amazing, thank you. It helps to put things to scale - I've tracked that fire on maps and in smoke forecasts, but this makes it 'real' in a more interesting and like you mention, oddly terrifying but beautiful way.
notamy 5y ago
Beautiful, and yet incredibly terrifying.

g5095 5y ago

I've been a volunteer firefighter in Australia for 25 years, my father and his father were.. the understanding that wildfires do this is old, I remember my grandfather talking about big wildfires in his day creating their own weather. I've been noticing in the media over the last ~5 years this narrative that climate change is causing this 'horrifying new phenomena' .. no. sorry. (PS: not a climate change skeptic, totally agree with the science, just not the media in this instance)

Swenrekcah 5y ago
Climate change does not create the concept of a hurricane or wildfire, nor any other physical phenomenon. Nobody has said that. What it does is induce extreme phenomena more often and in more locations. Edit: by nobody I mean scientists and knowledgeable people. TV talking heads misunderstand and misrepresent everything all the time, so undoubtedly they’ll have done the same with Climate Change.
- dragonsky67 5y ago
  Unfortunately the talking heads are what most people listen to. When they get it wrong, it allows the general public to claim the science is getting it wrong.

lumost 5y ago

Is there geological record on how stable these forests have been over the last few thousand years? I can't help but wonder if we're watching the west coast of north america shift to a more desert like climate through the PNW/BC/Sierra regions. Presumably if the burns are large enough, and the following wet season dry enough this process could occur over the course of only a few years.

bawolff 5y ago
Canada is a big place. Wildfires on the coast is kind of rare, but in the boreal forest its so common that there are literally species of trees whose seeds need the heat of a forest fire to germinate.

dotcommand 5y ago

Isn't this well known already? Don't small volcano eruptions create their own localized weather systems over the crater as well?

doggodaddo78 5y ago

I'm so glad I moved out of NorCal (Butte County). The West, SW, PNW, Canada and Siberia are desertifying.

spideymans 5y ago
I wish I could accuse you of being sensationalist.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

warglebargle 5y ago

This would be kind of cool if it wasn’t happening on a planet i live on… such a horrific feedback loop

littlestymaar 5y ago

Small note about the title: I've seen such title about “creating their own weather systems” recently in the news about different forest fire, as if it were something really special. It's not that special, every forest fire becoming big enough will do the same and it occurs quite frequently (at least on a global scale). This phenomenon is called a [Firestorm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestorm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestorm)