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  • Location: Camborne
  • Location: Camborne

Well you learn something new every day.

An Australian woman battling a huge bushfire on her property in the Queensland Outback at the weekend witnessed a rarely seen destructive phenomenon – a fire tornado.

Belinda Easton was trying to control a large grass fire that had broken out on Yakara Station, a family property near Thargomindah, 680 miles west of the state capital, Brisbane, when she saw a massive fire tornado form inside the inferno.

Ms Easton photographed the giant column of flame that rose about 300m (900ft) into the air and told The Times: “It was amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it.â€

The flame then broke off and jumped about 400m (1,300ft) over the fire break over the main road, and started another fire on the other side.

Ms Easton emailed her incredible photos to friends and they were soon passed around fire stations across the state.

The phenomenon occurs when an intensely hot fire sucks in colder air around it, according to Superintendent Wayne Waltisbuhl, of the Queensland Rural Fire Service.

As the hot air rises, cool air is sucked into a central hotspot and begins to spin, creating a vortex of flame. A fire tornado can even form pyrocumulous clouds, miles above the main blaze, he added.

“As the heat rises, unburned particles are carried up and find moisture pockets,†Mr Waltisbuhl said.

“The moisture wraps around them and forms a cloud, which stays quite hot. Often the heat can be so intense you’ll see lighting coming out of the clouds and even flames inside the cloud as well.â€

Mr Waltisbuhl said that eventually the cloud cools and the charred particles fall as black rain.

“People talk about the black rain that falls after vortexes ... that’s what it is,†he said.

firetornado1_349165b.jpg

firetornado2_349164b.jpg

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/australia-newzealand/article3578933.ece

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