{"id":4426,"date":"2026-07-28T18:44:21","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T18:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=4426"},"modified":"2026-07-28T18:44:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T18:44:21","slug":"its-so-hot-in-france-that-a-wildfire-created-a-never-before-seen-lightning-cloud-that-ignited-even-more-fires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=4426","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s so hot in France that a wildfire created a never-before-seen lightning cloud that ignited even more fires"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Put another way, that means the inferno was no longer simply being propelled by the weather. It was making its own. The thundercloud also produced violent, erratic winds capable of driving the flames in new directions.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=4424\">IMF praises \u2018sacrifice of the Argentine people\u2019 as Milei\u2019s austerity measures bring end of debt deals into view<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The phenomenon, called a pyrocumulonimbus, or pyroCb, is rare in Europe and more commonly documented in North America and Australia, where it occurs only over some of the most extreme fires. France\u2019s national firefighters federation said it had never before recorded one in the country.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The blaze erupted near Saumos on July 22 and has since burned more than 420 square kilometers (162 square miles) of forests and scrubland, damaged or destroyed more than 240 homes and forced 220,000 people to evacuate in Gironde.<\/p>\n<p>At about 6:20 p.m. Friday, two days after the fire began, the departmental fire and rescue service said it had generated a pyrocumulonimbus. The cloud weakened overnight as humidity rose, then formed again several times.<\/p>\n<h4>An electrified black thundercloud<\/h4>\n<p>Repeatedly, heat and smoke have surged upward into a vast black thundercloud, electrified and lit from within.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cImagine a campfire so large and hot that the smoke rising off it turns into a storm-like cloud,\u201d said Theodore M. Giannaros, a fire meteorologist at the National Observatory of Athens.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cThat is a pyroCb \u2014 a storm cloud born from the intense heat that a wildfire produces.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It takes more than a big fire.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>There is no set temperature at which one forms, Giannaros said; what is needed is the kind of atmosphere that breeds dry thunderstorms \u2014 very hot, very dry air near the ground, with cooler and moister air above it.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Hot air loaded with smoke and moisture then rises rapidly from the flames. As it climbs and cools, water vapor condenses around particles of ash.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Above the freezing level, droplets become ice crystals whose collisions separate electrical charges, as in an ordinary thunderstorm.<\/p>\n<h4>Lightning and more destruction follow<\/h4>\n<p>Beneath this storm lies a landscape already primed to burn. The cloud then amplifies the disaster that created it.<\/p>\n<p>Rising air pulls powerful winds toward the fire, while downdrafts punch gusts back to the surface.<\/p>\n<p>Those shifts can turn the flames, divide them into several fronts or send them racing in a new direction.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=4422\">Helen Toner: the Hugging Face hack was just a matter of time and exposes a huge blind spot in AI policy<\/a><\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a feedback loop, not a one-way effect,\u201d Giannaros said. \u201cOnce it forms, the cloud becomes its own weather system, sitting on top of the fire and making it harder to predict.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The systems can also spin up whirling columns of flame \u2014 usually a fire whirl, which Giannaros describes as a dust devil made of fire and heat instead of dust.<\/p>\n<p>True tornadoes are rarer, though one struck Redding, California, during the 2018 Carr Fire with winds equivalent to an EF-3, killing a fire inspector.<\/p>\n<p>For firefighters, escape routes can close without warning as fresh outbreaks appear beyond their crews and equipment.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Direct attack may become impossible, forcing crews to retreat and defend communities.<\/p>\n<p>The danger, Giannaros said, is fire moving faster than evacuations can be organized.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Until now, pyroCbs have been essentially an Australian and North American phenomenon. Canada alone produced a record 142 of them in 2023.<\/p>\n<h4>In Europe, pyroCbs have been rare<\/h4>\n<p>Portugal recorded one during its deadly 2017 fire season. France has now joined the list.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The continent is heating faster than any other on Earth \u2014 at roughly twice the global average since the 1980s, according to the EU\u2019s Copernicus Climate Change Service and the World Meteorological Organization \u2014 with heat waves growing more frequent and severe and drought spreading across the south, curing forests into fuel.<\/p>\n<p>Hotter and drier conditions give extreme fires more opportunity to form them, Giannaros said, but scientists still lack enough long-term data to establish a trend.<\/p>\n<p>The European research project ROSETTA aims to close that gap.<\/p>\n<p>The most common misunderstanding, he said, is that the cloud is merely a side effect. As long as it hangs above the flames, it is helping decide where the fire goes next.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>___<\/p>\n<p>The Associated Press\u2019 climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP\u2019s\u00a0standards\u00a0for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at\u00a0AP.org.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=4420\">Instagram cracks down on growing \u2018pervert glasses\u2019 problem with Meta Ray-Bans<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>France&#8217;s Gironde wildfire spawned a never-before-recorded pyrocumulonimbus cloud that struck the earth with lightning and lit fresh fires.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4425,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[129],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wildfires"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>It\u2019s so hot in France that a wildfire created a never-before-seen lightning cloud that ignited even more fires - 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