A fire tornado hit California. Here's how it happened.

At around 7:00 p.m. PT on July 26, a towering vortex of smoke and flame spun into the California sky.

The tornado-like column rose over 16,000 feet into the air. It was a violent night for the Carr Fire, which after preying on profoundly dry forests, breached the Sacramento River and headed into the City of Redding, home to over 90,000 people. 

There’s no official name for the dramatic phenomena, though “firenado” has become popular. 

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“I’m not particularly fond of the term,” Brenda Belongie, lead meteorologist of the U.S. Forest Service's Predictive Services in Northern California, who works and lives in Redding, said in an interview. “But it works because of the strength of the fire whirl, the size — and the destructiveness is not unlike the power of a tornado.” Read more...

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