The west coast of the US is ravaged by a huge wildfire. The so-called Bootleg Fire has already destroyed tens of thousands of acres of land in the state of Oregon.
Fires are currently raging in thirteen US states, but Oregon is by far the largest. More than 137,000 hectares of forest and grassland have completely burned down. That is three times more than the so-called Carr Fire, the fierce fire that raged in California in 2018. More than 1,600 buildings were destroyed and at least eight people were killed.
In Oregon, compared to the Carr Fire, the damage to residents is not so bad for the time being. 75 houses have gone up in flames and no deaths have yet been reported, because mainly nature reserves have been affected. Several thousand residents have been evacuated.
Fires affect the weather
Named after the Bootleg Spring well near the site of the fire, the Bootleg Fire isn’t just the biggest fire of the year. It is also the most intense wildfire. The fire creates huge clouds of hot air with smoke and moisture, which are called pyrocumulus clouds. Those clouds reach up to about 9 kilometers in height.
A spokesman for the forestry department said, according to international media, that the conflagration is so large and generates so much energy and heat that it even changes the weather. “Normally the weather and the wind determine what the fire does. This time the fire determines what the weather does,” he said.
According to correspondent Marieke de Vries, these enormous clouds of smoke sometimes cause lightning and fire tornadoes. “At the end of the day, those clouds collapse and create swirling eddies of heat, smoke and extreme winds. That mass then comes down and spreads over an even wider area, starting new fires.”
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