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Fire Tornado or Firenado

We know that warm and hot air rises. Warm air is less dense then cooler air, and therefore creates lift. Actual tornadoes descend from cumulonimbus clouds. An tornado will descend from a funnel cloud, due to lowering of a cumulonimbus, called a wall cloud. When air or debris begin to get picked up at the ground and start rotating, this is a tornado. Many ingredients are needed: warm moist air, lift, and directional and speed wind shear.

A firenado however, is developed from the ground up. The heating at the surface induces low pressure and as air continues to rise, the fire can extend aloft to greater heights creating a vortex or whirlwind. A cloud is not attached to a firenado. In fact, as the air rises, it cools and dissipates at higher altitudes. The heat that induces the vortex tube can allow the fire to extend to high altitudes several hundred feet aloft. This can give a vortex and spin in the atmosphere which is like a tornado visibly, but formed entirely differently.

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