An Oregon wildfire is so intense it is literally creating its own weather system
Oregon's Bootleg Fire is creating what NASA calls a "fire-breathing dragon of clouds"
By MATTHEW ROZSA
PUBLISHED JULY 20, 2021 7:09PM (EDT)
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Southern Oregon is currently being consumed by a conflagration known as the Bootleg Fire. It has already devoured more than 606 square miles at the time of this writing (an area larger than the city of Los Angeles) and has only been 30 percent contained. The behemoth blaze is accelerating its growth, and has been growing by 80 square miles per day or more.
It is also doing something that makes it much more difficult to manage: creating its own weather.
"The fire is so large and generating so much energy and extreme heat that it's changing the weather," Marcus Kauffman, a spokesman for the state forestry department, told The New York Times. "Normally the weather predicts what the fire will do. In this case, the fire is predicting what the weather will do."
https://www.salon.com/2021/07/20/an-oregon-wildfire-is-so-intense-it-is-literally-creating-its-own-weather-system/
