Fire Tornado: Best Footage Yet From Australia.
Phil Plait
Science • April 2014 • Views: 517
Last weekend I posted a video taken not too far from where I live showing a “fire tornado”—really a spinning vortex of rising air drawing its power from fire on the ground. It was pretty dramatic, mostly due to hundreds of tumbleweeds swirling around it, drawn in by the rotating column of wind.
After posting it, I got a note from Chris Tangey, who specializes in photography in Australia’s Outback. He took some footage of a fire tornado in 2012 that he claimed was better than what I posted … and he’s right.