What are ‘fire whirls’ caused by raging wildfires. spotted during the York Fire

A fire truck heads toward the York Fire on July 30 in the Mojave National Preserve, Calif.

Ty O’Neil/AP

They may sound like something from science fiction, but “fire whirls” are in fact real.

And the flaming vortexes have been spotted in recent days by firefighters battling a blaze along the California-Nevada border, federal authorities say.

“In some locations, firefighters on the north side of the fire observed fire whirls also known as whirlwinds,” the Mojave National Preserve said in a Facebook post on Monday.

“While these can be fascinating to observe they are a very dangerous natural phenomena that can occur during wildfires.”

Climate change is making the U.S. hotter and drier, increasing the risk of wildfires and in some cases the intensity of blazes.

When wildfires do ignite, they can create their own weather patterns, including fire whirls.

That’s when a wildfire plume combines with rotating air to form a “spinning column of fire” akin to a small tornado. As fire whirls stretch higher, they become skinnier and spin faster.

Fire whirls are related to other extreme weather events, such as dust devils, water spouts and fire tornadoes, experts say.

“Fire tornadoes are more of that, the larger version of a fire whirl, and they are really the size and scale of a regular tornado,” Jason Forthofer, a firefighter and mechanical engineer at the U.S. Forest Service’s Missoula Fire Sciences Lab in Montana, told Montana Public Radio in 2021.

According to the U.S. Forest Service, fire whirls can range in size from less than one meter to…