But the McKinney fire, which erupted Friday, generated four separate thunder and lightning storms within its first 24 hours alone. [Deadly California wildfire wipes out scenic river town]Mike Flannigan, a fire scientist at Thompson Rivers University in western Canada, said he isn’t shocked to see fires this powerful. The troposphere is where weather happens, and where eye-searing clouds of smoke and soot circulate even from moderately sized fires. In four of the geographical regions they examined, maximum smoke plume height increased by an average of 320 feet per year. The dataare unclear on how much the height of Klamath smoke is increasing, Wilmot said, but the concentration of harmful particulate pollution coming out of its clouds most definitely is climbing.

Source: Los Angeles Times August 04, 2022 13:03 UTC