Fire Tornadoes Make Forest Fires Even More Deadly

Photo credit: Josh Lane

Forest fires are already frightening and deadly enough on their own, but when the conditions are right, something hellish happens: fire whirls. Fires sometimes spawn their own winds as the flames consume oxygen, creating tornadoes filed with fire and noxious gases.

From Discover Magazine:

All these wonders start with the plume that is formed as the heated air rises from the fire in a column. Usually a strong prevailing wind quashes such a plume before it can grow. But when the fire is especially hot and the wind is weak, the plume can prevail. “Wind is the most critical weather component for fires,” says Margaret Gross, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Riverside, California. “It determines more than anything else how fast a fire will spread. But when the power of the fire is greater than the wind, these large plumes can rise high into the atmosphere. Those are the fires that usually generate weather.”

Photo credit: Boston.com

Fire whirls develop in a similar manner to dust devils, growing from a heat source close to the ground. When there’s a little instability in the atmosphere, with warm, rising currents, the whirl’shitting a cliff or some other obstacle.

Fire whirls can reach 300 to 400 feet in height, and 20 to 50 feet in width. As they blow over the surface at five to seven miles per hour, they can ignite new fires in unburned areas.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

In 1923, the Great Kanto earthquake in Japan spawned a massive fire whirl that killed 38,000 people in just fifteen minutes. Three years later, numerous fire whirls developed after lightning struck an oil storage facility near San Luis Obispo, California, killing two and producing significant structural damage.

Link [Wikipedia] + [Discover Magazine]

Rare ‘Smiling Rainbow’ Seen Over Sussex, England

Whoever heard of an upside-down rainbow? People in Sussex, England glimpsed an extremely rare phenomenon when “freak atmospheric conditions” created a ribbon of light in the sky shaped like a smile. But what they saw technically wasn’t even a rainbow at all.

From The Daily Mail:

While normal rainbows are formed when light penetrates raindrops and emerges on the other side without changing direction, the smile is formed when sunlight shines through millions of tiny ice crystals in cirrus and cirrus stratus clouds.

Because the crystals are flat and hexagonal, they invert the light and create an upside-down curve called a circumzenithal arc.

The phenomenon relies on the sun being low in the sky, normally less than 32 degrees from the horizon.

The arcs can appear at any time of the year, hovering in the sky only fleetingly because clouds tend to move quickly near the zenith.

The Sussex ‘upside-down rainbow’ was in the sky for about five minutes, onlookers say, and then suddenly it was gone.

Another strange phenomenon in the sky was captured by scientists earlier this year – the “eye of God’ or Helix Nebula, which is actually a dying star that resembles a human eye with a blue pupil, white of the eye and a pink lid created by layers of gas

Link [The Daily Mail]

The Bizarre Natural Phenomenon of Ball Lightning – Photos and Video

Image via Xenophilia

No, that’s not a UFO you just saw travel across the horizon. That bizarre orb of glowing light is called ‘ball lightning’, and despite many reports of sightings over hundreds of years, scientists still know very little about this strange and unusual natural phenomenon.

They can’t tell us what causes it, or even exactly what it is. They can’t explain why people report being able to get startlingly close to these orbs, which reportedly range in size from tennis balls to beach balls, and seeing them roll on the ground.

Image via Xenophilia

National Geographic has a first-hand account from Graham K. Hubler, a physicist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC:

“It drifted along a few feet above the ground,” Hubler recalled, “but when it came inside [the pavilion] it dropped down to the ground and skittered along the floor.”

“It made lots of gyrations or oscillations and a hissing sound like boiling water. When it went out the other side [of the pavilion], it climbed back up [several feet off the ground].”

Hubler says the ball behaved as if it had a charge and was following electric field lines along the Earth.

“I remember telling people what I had seen, and they thought I was crazy, so I stopped talking about it,” he said.

There are around 10,000 written accounts spanning many countries, all with similar observations. The sightings generally accompany thunderstorms, but scientists aren’t sure whether ball lightning is related to conventional lightning. Ball lightning floats near the ground, sometimes bouncing off the ground or other surfaces, doesn’t react to wind and defies the laws of gravity. An average ball lightning glows with the brightness of a 100-watt bulb, and some people have even reported seeing it melt glass windows.

Images via Ern Mainka Photography

We’ve included some photos here that purport to be of ball lightning, but it’s difficult to say whether that is really what has been captured. The one below shows what researchers believe might be ball lightning created in a laboratory.

Image via Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik

These videos may have captured ball lightning in action:

From National Geographic:

The record suggests that ball lightning is not inherently deadly, but there are reports of people being killed by contact—most notably the pioneering electricity researcher Georg Richmann, who died in 1753.

Richmann is believed to have been electrocuted by ball lightning as he conducted a lightning-rod experiment in St. Petersburg, Russia.

The phenomenon lasts only a short time, perhaps ten seconds, before either fading away or violently dissipating with a small explosion.

Theories include plasma clouds composed of charged particles that recombine into atoms and glow with light, as well as small particles holding together in a ball by electrical charges emitting chemical energy through oxidation. Researchers are trying to reproduce the conditions that seem to cause ball lightning in a laboratory setting to research the phenomenon further.

Bizarre, shocking and strange – it just goes to show that there is still so much mystery in this world, so many things we can’t explain or understand.

Link [National Geographic]

Unusual Cluster of Earthquakes in Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone National Park has been experiencing an unusual string of earthquakes lasting three days in a row, from Saturday to Monday. Although such clusters of earthquakes are fairly common in the area due to Yellowstone’s 10,000 geysers and hot springs, scientists say the recent quakes are far more intense than usual.

From LiveScience:

The largest of the earthquakes was a magnitude 3.9 at 10:15 pm MST on Dec. 27, a day after the swarm began. The sequence has included nine events of magnitude 3 to 3.9 and approximately 24 of magnitude 2 to 3 at the time of this release. A total of more than 250 events large enough to be located have occurred in this swarm.

“Scientists cannot identify any causative fault or other feature without further analysis,” according to the statement.

Most of these temblors would not be felt by humans. Earthquakes generally have to exceed magnitude 4.0 to cause light damage.

Scientists wonder if the shaking might presage a larger event. This month’s swarm is the most intense in this area for some years, scientists said. It is centered on the east side of the Yellowstone caldera, a giant basin created in a colossal eruption some 620,000 years ago.

Researchers have been predicting for decades that the Yellowstone super volcano will eventually erupt once more, blanketing more than half the country with up to three feet of ash. Yellowstone remains very geologically active, and though it is being monitored, those same researchers say there isn’t any evidence that an eruption is imminent.

If it were to blow, humanity might not survive. Geologists say an eruption of the Yellowstone super volcano would dwarf those of Mount St. Helens, Krakatoa and others that have occurred during the last few dozen millenia. Due to the effects on global climate, agriculture would be devastated and many people would starve.

It’s just another uneasy reminder of how fragile our place in the world really is.

Link [LiveScience]
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

9 Examples of Incredible Tornado Photography

When it comes to storm photography, there’s not much that can beat tornadoes. They’re dramatic, frightening and somehow incredibly beautiful. The first three photos shown here were taken by ‘storm chasers’ Mike Hollingshead and Eric Nguyen, who head out the door any time a tornado warning is issued in order to experience the storms up close and capture amazing images. You can see more of Nguyen’s images at his website, or in his book, Adventures in Tornado Alley: The Storm Chasers.

Storm chasers aren’t always photographers or journalists – some are research scientists, while others are just adrenaline junkies seeking the rush of being so close to danger.

Below are photographs taken by ‘The Stormgasm Team’, a group of meteorologists and meteorology students who call themselves “the most hardcore storm chasers in the world”. Jim Bishop, Tom Santillo, Simon Brewer and Reed Timmer have captured some amazing images of the storms they’ve chased all over the United States. See more of their work at Stormgasm.com.

Link [The Daily Mail]

Frozen Water: Stunning Natural Ice Formations

(Images via Haikiba,  Lady Molly, James Carter, unc.edu, Getaway, Birch and Pixdaus)

If you can’t experience the mind-boggling, incredibly beautiful wonders of nature firsthand, the next best thing is definitely beautiful photographs that almost make you feel as if you’re there. When it’s this cold outside, it’s easy to imagine being face-to-face with the incredible ice formations featured on WebEcoist in the series, ’15 Epic Water and Ice Formations and Phenomena’.

(Image via pbase)

WebEcoist has compiled photos of some of the most breathtaking natural ice formations on both a small and large scale, from tiny delicate ice crystals to the majestic – and rapidly disappearing – icebergs of the Arctic.

(Images via Madhouse Thought, Weather Savvy, das.uwyo.edu, SPRI, Seaway and hickerphoto)

If you aren’t already reading WebEcoist regularly, add it to your RSS feeder or subscribe via email now. Check out my review of the online magazine over on Eco Chick – it really is a gem, and unique among the many sites in the green blogosphere.

Link [WebEcoist]

Cell Phones Blamed for Fatal Lightning Strikes

Throughout the month of July alone, lightning has killed and injured more than a dozen people according to Russian officials. Three sunbathers and one woman talking on her cell phone while walking along a river were killed, and a representative from local weather observation FOBOS says he believes that the accidents might be connected to increased use of portable electronic devices.  Cell phones and mp3 players are said to be electromagnetic field carriers, therefore making them conductors that would attract lightning.

Shit.  Now in addition to going sterile and getting brain cancer, we have to worry about lightning hitting our cell phones.

Link [InventorSpot]
Photo credit: Flickr user DDFic

Tornado Hits University’s Nuclear Reactor in Kansas

This could have gone really, really badly. A tornado hit a nuclear research reactor on the Kansas State University campus last week. Though the tornado flattened other buildings on the campus, including the Wind Erosion Laboratory, the reactor was untouched. Luckily, someone had the forethought to shut the thing down properly earlier in the day.

From Reuters:

The tornado caused extensive damage to the building, but no damage to the reactor, which had been shut down properly earlier in the day, the university said.

The reactor is located in Manhattan in Riley County, about 120 miles west of Kansas City, Missouri.

Because of the event, the university declared an alert, which is the second lowest of the NRC’s four emergency classifications.

There are more than 30 operating research and test reactors in the United States, according to the NRC’s website.

Link [Reuters]
Photo credit: Flickr user Chimothy27