Rare Fire Tornado Caught On Camera

September 17, 2012

A rare fire tornado was caught on camera in Alice Springs, Australia by a man named Chris Tangey.

According to The Sun, Chris, 52, was in the area scouting locations for a movie when he saw the fire tornado.

“The weather was perfectly still and it was an entirely uneventful day,” said Chris.

“Then the next thing a man is yelling, ‘What the hell is that?’ and I turned around and saw a 30-metre fire tornado.

“I was about 300 metres away and there was no wind but the tornado sounded like a fighter jet. My jaw just dropped.

“I’ve been shooting in the outback for 23 years and I have never seen anything like it. We’ve heard about them but they’re never seen.

“The whole experience was staggering and the length and variety were astonishing.”

Astonishing indeed.

These fire tornados are a rare natural phenomenons that occur when warm air meets fire or when dry warm winds get so hot that they it causes a fire to ignite. The updraft of the fire actually causes the air to begin spinning or whirling like a tornado.

Marino di Marzo, the Dept. Chair of Fire Protection Engineering at the University of Maryland explains that fire tornados are “much more dangerous than normal fires because the combustion rate is much higher.”

Thankfully no one was injured by this most recent fire tornado, which broke records by sticking around for 40 minutes – approximately twice the normal amount of time.

Nature sure is amazing.