TORONTO -- Just when the apocalyptic imagery of the Australian wildfires couldn’t get any worse, new footage has emerged of flames on Kangaroo Island curling up from the ground and spinning into the sky like a tornado from hell.
In the video taken by Brenton Davis, gusts of wind push a massive fire burning through nearby trees across a field.
A whirlwind of ash, smoke and dirt swirl above the ground. Then, for several seconds, flames are kicked up into the vortex, forming the fiery dust devil before the video cuts out.
The phenomenon is known as a “fire whirl” or “fire devil.”
“We had a fair few of them today and it wasn’t even a hot day,” Davis wrote on Facebook.
The unsettling phenomenon doesn’t last long, but are often mistakenly referred to as a fire tornado or “firenado.” Scientists reportedly discourage the latter since fire whirls aren’t formed like tornadoes, which occur due to conditions up in the atmosphere.
Instead, fire whirls are created when hot and dry air rise quickly from the ground, according to science writer Marc Lallanilla.
“In that sense, firenadoes have more in common with whirlwinds or ‘dust devils,’ which typically form on hot, sunny days when the ground heats up the air nearby,” he wrote on Live Science in 2014 during California wildfires.
The island has been hit by bad fires before. In 2007, a series of lightning strikes started fires that destroyed almost 1,000 square kilometres of the island.
The blaze where the fire whirls formed was near a wilderness protection site and has been described as “virtually unstoppable.” So far, more than 1,500 square kilometres, or nearly half of Kangaroo Island, has been burned by the new fires.
The island is home to fewer than 5,000 people and several luxury accommodations, including the Southern Ocean Lodge, which has been destroyed.
In the country as a whole, about 5 million hectares (50,000 square kilometres) of land have burned during the summer wildfires. At least 23 people have died and more than 1,400 homes have been ruined.
