The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently completed a 670-acre prescribed fire at the Oxford Slough Waterfowl Production Area (WPA) in Idaho.
The photo above shows a fire whirl on the prescribed fire. These have also been called “fire tornadoes”, but recently someone coined the term “firenado”, which we have taken a liking to. In August we posted a video of a massive firenado on a fire in Alaska.
These photos, which were all taken by Lance Roberts, and others can be found on the USFWS Facebook page, where they described the Oxford Slough WPA:
Oxford Slough WPA is one of nearly 7,000 WPAs nationwide, and the only WPA in Region 1. The 1,878-acre WPA is located 10 miles north of Preston, Idaho, abutting the small town of Oxford, where it provides valuable foraging habitat for species such as cranes, geese, Franklin’s gulls, and white-faced ibis, and nesting habitat not only for waterfowl, but white-faced ibis, Franklin’s gulls, and other waterbirds.
That looks like a dust devil to me – no fire associated with the spinning air.
You could be right, Erik.
Erik was right we mislabeled the photo in facebook, should have said dust devil. It started out as a fire whirl but turned into a dust devil in the ash.