Fire tornado?

[Vorticity0123]

At the 18th of January in 2003, there was a large fire going on in Australia. At that particular day, a big disaster occured. A possible Fire tornado struck Canberra. Trees were snapped in such a way, that couldn't only have occured by fire, something more was going on. The wind appeared to be the main culprit, as snapping of this kind of trees could only have occured with winds up to 150 km/h.

Recent research revealed that the only explanation could have been a fire tornado. The cause of it would have been that two fires came together at a point on top of a hill, releasing a vast amount of energy and moisture (as trees contain a lot of moisture that is being released when burned), that caused a supercell to develop. This supercell created a tornado which raged through the forests and, later on, Canberra.

 

A link with the full story and a somewhat more sophisticated explanation of this remarkable event can be found here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqYEeivt8Eg

 

An image containing the tornado 

 

The fire tornado can be seen in the middle right of the picture.

 

Source (in Dutch, it contains some more images about this disaster): http://www.weer.nl/weer-in-het-nieuws/weernieuws/ch/4f36f7c0de6d1e5baef5db6ddf89776a/article/de_vuurtornado_van_canberra.html

 

Reading this article, I was quite fascinated by the fact that such tornadoes can actually develop during a fire. As far as I know, this is the only occurence of such a phenomenon.

 

EDIT: What is meant by a fire tornado, is a normal tornado, but then by the energy and moisture released by fire and hurling through areas where a fire is going on. It isn,t really a tornado consisting of fire.

Edited October 23, 2013 by Vorticity0123