Heavy smoke rolls off of a wildfire burning in Central Oregon, July 27, 2026. The record-breaking fire season, which is not over yet, has burned 2.5 million acres statewide.
Sarah Nairalez / OPB
Large and super-hot wildfires have been increasing as global temperatures rise. So too have the phenomena they create: “pyrocumulonimbus clouds,” better known by their informal, easier-to-pronounce name, “fire clouds.”
Large fires push air and particulates into the higher atmosphere where they can form thunderclouds that can produce electrical storms and tornadoes. The wind and lightning expand the large fires they were generated from.
But this summer, NASA launched a new project collecting data on fire clouds using a modified U2 spy plane, including fires in Central Oregon.
We learn more from Dr. David Peterson, an atmospheric scientist at the US Naval Research Laboratory in Monterey, CA, and the principal investigator.
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