A rare fire tornado spun to life during a controlled burn near Orange City, Florida, swirling for about one minute before dissipating into the smoky sky. The fiery vortex, spotted in Volusia County, gave onlookers a brief but striking glimpse of one of nature's stranger phenomena as flames twisted upward in a spinning column.
Chopper Camera Catches the Rare Spectacle
Footage of the fire tornado was captured by Chopper 2, according to WBAL News Radio, which is the sister station of Orlando's WESH. The video shows the tight, twisting column of flame rotating over the burn area before losing steam and dissolving after roughly a minute, the outlet reported. The controlled burn that produced the spectacle took place near Orange City, a Volusia County community located around 30 miles from Orlando, per the same report.
Fire tornadoes are not everyday occurrences, and their formation depends on a very specific set of conditions. The station's report explains that intense heat from a fire can cause air to rise rapidly, and as that rapidly rising air shoots upward, it creates a vacuum that pulls in surrounding air, generating a powerful updraft. That updraft, per the report, is what allows the rising air to begin spinning, forming a whirling column of fire — a process the outlet attributes to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
How Big Can These Fiery Whirls Get?
The scale of these events can vary wildly. Fire whirls usually range in diameter from less than one foot to more than 500 feet, according to figures the outlet attributes to the National Weather Service. That means the Volusia County tornado could have been anywhere on a massive spectrum of possible sizes, though the report does not specify measurements for this particular event.
Some fire whirls have reached startling intensity elsewhere in the country. A 2018 fire tornado tied to the Carr Fire near Redding, California, was reported to have an estimated speed of 64 meters per second, or about 143 mph, according to the Library of Congress. Historically, the most devastating fire whirl on record is believed to be the 1923 Tokyo fire whirl, which followed large urban fires sparked by an earthquake, according to the USDA Forest Service.
There is no indication the Volusia County fire tornado approached anything close to those extremes — it was tied to a routine controlled burn rather than a wildfire, and it dissipated within about a minute of forming. Still, the footage offers a rare, close-up look at how quickly conditions during a fire can twist into a spinning, self-sustaining column of flame.
