In the early days of the Creek Fire, photographs went viral of what looked like a mushroom cloud billowing into the atmosphere over the blaze . It’s no wonder that type of cloud, known as pyrocumulonimbus, was dubbed by a NASA writer as “ the fire-breathing dragon of clouds ”: Each one is a towering thunderstorm, complete with thunder, lightning and rain, generated by a wildfire. “They act as a chimney, funneling smoke from near the surface to high altitudes,” says meteorologist David Peterson of the Naval Research Laboratory in Monterey. “So all that smoke goes straight into those clouds. And it makes one of the dirtiest clouds on earth, if you will, and there are many similarities to a volcanic eruption.” Today I was flying from San Jose to Las Vegas on SWA & I looked out my window & I saw this cloud. I l found out that it is a cumulonimbus flammagenitus cloud aka pyrocumulonimbus cloud, a type of cloud that forms above a source of heat, such as a wildfire #CreekFire pic
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