Wildfires
Apparently running out of cataclysmic events to throw at us this year, Mother Nature decided to reach deep into her bag of tricks and pull out a Biblical classic: swirling hellfire.
The National Weather Service issued its first-ever tornado warning for a twister spawned by fire early Saturday afternoon after a wildfire in Northern California produced a towering, flaming vortex. While not unheard of, fire tornadoes are some of the rarest weather phenomena on Earth, and meteorologists are saying this is the first time one's received an official tornado warning.
A raging fire described as "completely out of control" is threatening one of South America's major wetland ecosystems. The fire has been burning for months now, and is visible from the balconies of luxury apartments along the shoreline of the Paraná River in Argentina's central city of Rosario
Locals have been sharing photos and videos of the fires on social media.
The fire, dubbed the Apple Fire by local firefighters, was straddling Riverside and San Bernardino counties and consumed more than 23sq miles (about 60sq km) of dry brush and timber, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
There was zero containment early Sunday. The cause is under investigation.
The blaze began as two adjacent fires reported Friday evening in Cherry Valley, an unincorporated area near the city of Beaumont about 85 miles (137km) east of downtown Los Angeles.
Flames leapt along brushy ridge tops and came close to homes while firefighters attacked it from the ground and air.

Fire burns near the village of Galataki as authorities evacuate the place near Corinth, Greece. July 22, 2020
A blaze at the popular spa area of Loutraki, Corinthia prefecture, was placed under control after it broke out at a forested area.
Fire Brigade operations were successful and managed to save evacuated homes in the area caught in the line of fire.
The Drassa settlement in the Corinthia prefecture was evacuated on Thursday as the fire that started on Wednesday at Kehries is burning "out of control," Corinth Mayor Vassilis Nanopoulos told the Athens-Macedonian News Agency (ANA-MPA), adding that a summer camp t Sofiko was also evacuated.
Mayor Nanopoulos requested that the government and the Peloponnese Regional authority declare the municipality in a state of emergency as 268 firefighters with 61 fire engines and 15 grounds teams battled the blaze and high winds created multiple pockets of fire.
The fire started around noon on July 6, quickly taking up over 50 hectares of the forest. By the morning of July 7, firefighters contained the fire to some 85 hectares. But due to hot weather and high winds, it has spread to the north and hit a village of Smolyanynove later that day.
As of the afternoon of June 8, the wildfires have destroyed 23 residential houses in Smolyanynove and 80 cottage houses in the Vovche Ozero housing community there, according to the State Emergency Service. Another 36 residential houses were damaged in Smolyanynove.
Currently, 25 people, including 16 children, are in the district hospital. Another seven are in the hospital in the nearby city of Severodonetsk, according to Pavlo Lysianskyi, representative of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights in Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts.
Rescuers have evacuated 30 people, including 13 children, from Smolyanynove, and resettled another 30, according to the State Emergency Service.

FILE PHOTO: A wildfire near the village of Esso, in the Bystrinsky district, Kamchatka region, June 18, 2020
This summer is on course to be the hottest since record-keeping began, in the world's largest country. Towns usually still blanketed by snow at this time of year are experiencing a blazing heatwave, thanks to the escalating climate crisis.
The effects of global warming have arrived and are already causing problems, especially in Siberia. A massive oil spill in the far northern mining city of Norilsk earlier this year was declared a federal emergency, after a pipeline sank into the mud and broke. The accident, which will take decades to clean up, was blamed on melting permafrost - the result of unusually high temperatures.
Comment: Note that a heatwave in the Arctic does not equal GLOBAL warming, because by all accounts temperatures around the planet are plummeting, including temperatures in the atmosphere.
Comment: What is clear from the above is that our planet is under going a significant shift, little of which is explained by the now debunked theory of 'global warming':
- Stunning iridescent clouds snapped above skies of Siberia's Belukha mountain
- Global warming... in the deeps: Tremendous geothermal heat source is melting Antarctic ice sheet from below
- Colder summers killing Antarctica's moss forests
- Extreme winter storms and wave heights have been increasing over the last 70 years in the Western Europe
- Behind the Headlines: Earth changes in an electric universe: Is climate change really man-made?
- Adapt 2030 Ice Age Report: Interview with Laura Knight-Jadczyk and Pierre Lescaudron

Flames from the Quail Fire burn an outbuilding near Winters (Yolo County), June 7, 2020
It destroyed 4 structures, threatened another 100 structures and prompted mandatory evacuations for Quail Canyon Road between Pleasants Valley Road and Highway 12, according to Cal Fire's Sonoma-Lake-Napa Unit. Pleasants Valley Road was closed.
Cal Fire said on Sunday that 600 firefighters were battling the blaze. Thirty engines responded to the scene along with seven hand crews, nine dozers, and "numerous firefighting air tankers from throughout the state are flying fire suppression missions as conditions allow."
Satellite images showed that smoke was blowing into Sacramento, according to the National Weather Service.
There were approximately 1,858 recorded lightning strikes throughout the state Saturday with Sunday's tally at more than 2,900 by 8 p.m. On Saturday, the lightning was scattered throughout a ribbon starting in the Yukon-Kukoskwim Delta north of Bethel stretching across through Central Interior with a cluster appearing north of the Mat-Su Valley. On Sunday, that area was expanded to the Canadian border as rain storms moved through the Fairbanks area in the afternoon.
Comment: As the original title noted: You can mark firenado off of your 2020 apocalypse bingo card.
More footage has emerged on Twitter:
And this isn't the first firenado that's been spawned from this wildfire:
In Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection Pierre Lescaudron explicates the drivers behind wind vortices of all kinds: See also: