2 ms·
Air rises in fires so they are cyclonic (counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere, clockwise in the Southern)
by labster 3y ago
Air rises in fires so they are cyclonic (counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere, clockwise in the Southern)
- scheme271 3y agoCoriolis effect is common in large (~10s of km) systems but I'm not sure the effect is strong enough to affect something as turbulent as air rising from a fire. At small sizes, like water in a toilet, it's not large enough to determine which direction the water swirls.
- labster 3y agoI hear you but some of the big fire driven storms really do get up to the mid-range of mesoscale, where Coriolis force starts to play a role. It obviously won’t have the same role as synoptic phenomena, but I suspect most fire whirls have cyclonic motion, unless local orography really favors anticyclonic flow.