Firefighters in France said a wildfire ravaging southwest France produced a pyrocumulonimbus cloud, the first such fire cloud they had seen in France. Eric Brocardi, spokesman for the National Firefighters Federation of France, said the blaze was creating its own weather and forcing crews into a defensive fight.
Brocardi said the intense heat at the heart of the fire rose in a column, met cooler air masses at the top, and formed a pyrocumulonimbus, also called a cumulonimbus flammagenitus cloud. He said the smoke cloud could generate its own winds, make anything in its path spontaneously combust, and send lightning back toward embers on the ground.
France and the fire cloud
The phenomenon has mainly been seen in Australia and North America, where wildfire conditions can drive the same kind of convective fire. NASA calls pyrocumulonimbus clouds the fire-breathing dragon of clouds, a description that fits a blaze intense enough to build its own weather system.
Brocardi said the fire was unprecedented in France and that it was spreading in every direction, with multiple fire fronts and winds that constantly shifted direction. He said firefighters cannot fight the blaze directly and must look for a weak spot rather than attack the whole fire front.
Eric Brocardi on strategic retreat
Brocardi said firefighters had reached a point of operational impossibility and needed strategic retreat while keeping everyone safe under constant bombardment. He said the situation is unusual because the fire creates its own winds, unlike a standard fire that spreads in a conical pattern.
He said salvation would come either from heavy rain for three days or by steering the fire toward the sea, where it would die out on its own. For crews on the ground, the immediate task is to hold positions long enough to find that weak spot before the fire shifts again.
