VANCOUVER A combination of intense heat and drought conditions is causing wildfires in Western Canada to generate their own weather systems, experts say.
Michael Fromm, a meteorologist with the United States Naval Research Laboratory, said the phenomenon is known as a pyrocumulonimbus firestorm and has been tracked this year in British Columbia, Saskatchewan Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario.
Scientists have been tracking the storms since May. The first one was seen this season in Manitoba, Fromm said in an interview Monday.
The Village of Lytton in B.C. saw firestorms on two successive days in late June, he said. It was probably the single largest pyrocumulonimbus storm of the year so far, he added.
Wildfires in Canada are creating their own weather systems, experts say
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Western Canadian fires are creating own weather systems
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Fires in Western Canada creating own weather systems, experts say | iNFOnews | Thompson-Okanagan s News Source
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Large wildfires up and down the West Coast are increasingly creating weather patterns that trigger high winds and lightning, according to researchers at the US Naval Research Lab in Washington DC. Pyrocumulonimbus clouds (or pyroCB for short), are thunderstorms that are created over the top of large wildfires. PyroCB’s act like giant chimneys, funneling massive amounts of smoke into thunderstorms, creating the conditions for dangerous and volatile lightning. These clouds are a form of severe weather known as fire weather.
The lightning that appears from the clouds can potentially worsen the wildfires on the ground. There is not enough data on the Bootleg fire to say if this is currently happening, however, early research does give some insight into this possibility.