Witch Fire

As fire ecologist Richard Minnich has said, "You can send an arsonist to Death Valley and he'll never be arrested."

In the 1990s, pyroCbs were a disturbing but exhilarating novelty wondered at, and discussed by, a small group of meteorologists. Now, they are not only a signature of major wildfires, they are actively growing in size and frequency—to the point that they are mimicking volcanoes, previously Earth’s most rapid and powerful climate-changing agents. Py

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while floods generally follow rivers, and hurricanes follow weather patterns in specific parts of the ocean, fire can occur anywhere there’s fuel, and fire’s menu is astonishingly broad, including virtually everything under the sun save dirt, rock, metal, and water. Furthermore, the paths fire takes are determined almost exclusively by the wind, wh

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a fire service pilot estimated head fire heights at a hundred yards, and a number of victims perished in their cars, overtaken by flames even as they fled at highway speed. But there was another killing energy released by those fires that moved even faster—at the speed of light. So otherworldly were the fire conditions on Black Saturday that animal

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