{"id":1278,"date":"2026-07-30T20:15:39","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T20:15:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=1278"},"modified":"2026-07-30T20:15:39","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T20:15:39","slug":"france-had-never-seen-a-fire-cloud-until-this-months-record-smashing-blazes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=1278","title":{"rendered":"France Had Never Seen a \u201cFire Cloud\u201d Until This Month\u2019s Record-Smashing Blazes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"People<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

This story was originally published by\u00a0<\/em>Wired\u00a0and\u00a0is reproduced here as part of the\u00a0<\/em>Climate Desk\u00a0collaboration.<\/em><\/p>

Read more The Next Victim of Trump\u2019s Political Prosecutions? Congressional Oversight.<\/a><\/p>\n

Firefighters in France<\/span>\u00a0are confronting a phenomenon never seen in the region before: fire clouds. It\u2019s a sign of the\u00a0intensity of the blazes\u00a0burning\u2014and how climate change is upping the odds that they appear.<\/p>\n

A wave of fires has swept over France and Spain, sending\u00a0hundreds of thousands fleeing. Firefighters on the front lines are facing what a spokesperson for the French firefighter association\u00a0told AFP was an \u201coperational impossibility\u201d\u2014in other words, a \u201cnatural force beyond our control.\u201d<\/p>\n

As evidence of how out of control the wildfires in France are, look no further than the skies where the blazes have, in some cases, created their own weather. To form a fire cloud\u2014what meteorologists call a pyrocumulonimbus or the even more metal-sounding cumulonimbus flammagenitus\u2014you first need heat, which fires have in spades.<\/p>\n

But just as important are dry conditions near the ground and cool, relatively moist conditions aloft in the atmosphere. As superheated smoke rises miles above the flames and into the cool atmosphere, water vapor condenses around the particles of ash to form water droplets. (Yes, water vapor and water droplets are two different things.) As the air keeps rising, those water droplets eventually become ice crystals.<\/p>\n

At this point, the smoke and water droplets have created a cloud, but unfortunately one that\u2019s unlikely to provide much relief in the form of rain. Instead, these towering fire clouds can unleash lightning strikes that start more fires and generate powerful downdrafts that reach the ground to fan flames further. At their worst, pyrocumulonimbus clouds can even spawn tornadoes.<\/p>

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Pyrocumulonimbus clouds\u00a0have been documented in the US, Canada, and Australia, among a handful of other locations. But until now, there were no documented fire clouds in France. While the country is no stranger to wildfires, the size and ferocity of this summer\u2019s blazes are well outside the norm.<\/p>\n

Last week was France\u2019s single most destructive week for wildfires over the past 20 years, according to data from the European Forest Fire Information System. It more than doubled the previous record during that period, which coincides with accurate satellite data. This isn\u2019t an isolated bad week either. More than 220,000 acres have burned across the country so far, six times the annual average. That\u2019s 61,000 acres higher than the previous yearly record.<\/p>\n

If that sounds like a familiar trend, well, it unfortunately is. Burning fossil fuels has heated the planet up, making explosive wildfires more common and destructive around the world. A\u00a02024 study\u00a0found the incidence of extreme fires globally more than doubled from 2003 to 2023. Six of the seven most extreme years have happened since 2016.<\/p>\n

After a slight weekend reprieve as temperatures dipped, they\u2019re expected to rocket back up above 104 degrees F (40 degrees C) in France and 108 degrees Fahrenheit in Spain later this week. That means firefighters will have to contend with more extreme fire weather\u2014including the possibility of clouds created by the blazes themselves.<\/p>

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Extreme fire conditions on the ground have created a \u201cnatural force beyond our control.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1276,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment"],"yoast_head":"\nFrance Had Never Seen a \u201cFire Cloud\u201d Until This Month\u2019s Record-Smashing Blazes - Moving and Mortgage Hub<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/movingandmortgagehub.com\/?p=1278\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"France Had Never Seen a \u201cFire Cloud\u201d Until This Month\u2019s Record-Smashing Blazes - 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