The facts of the Australian wildfires that have burned for the last three months are becoming almost unbelievable. More than 20 million acres of land – an area twice the size of Denmark – has burned. A billion animals have died, along with at least 27 people. And now, scientists around the world are tracking the growth of a rare weather event above the bushfires: pyrocumulonimbus, a cross between a thunderstorm and a fire.
Nasa’s official website calls the pyrocumulonimbus formation a “fire-breathing dragon”. It is an airborne vortex that sucks up everything in its path and spits out embers kilometres away. Scientists had considered pyrocumulonimbus clouds to be extremely rare but more have been identified in the last ten years, as extreme weather events become more common.
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