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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Katharine Gammon

‘Fire-breathing dragon clouds’: a wildfire-fueled phenomenon explained

cloud is shaped like a flying saucer
A pyrocumulonimbus cloud formation is seen from a plane amid bushfires in New South Wales, Australia, in January 2020. Photograph: Social Media/Aidan Morrison/Reuters

Nasa calls them the “fire-breathing dragon of clouds”.

Aerial images of the McKinney fire taken this week captured an increasingly common phenomenon: a nearly 50,000ft plume known as a pyrocumulonimbus.

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