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Given all that's been unleashed in the world lately, the fiery funnels that rose from northern California wildfires over the weekend were guaranteed to generate headlines.
But like the so-called murder hornets that fear mongers foisted on folks earlier this year, flaming twisters remain nearly 3,000 miles from the Northeast -- and extremely rare.
A wildfire that began last Friday near Loyalton, CA -- about 45 miles west of Reno, Nevada -- “exploded most impressively” on Saturday “with a very large pyrocumulus and reports of fire tornadoes," the National Weather Service reported.
This comes at the same time that triple-digit temperatures blanketed California and a freak lightning storm struck the Bay Area.
Sacramento hit 112 degrees on Sunday, while Death Valley, the lowest and hottest spot in the United States, reached 130 degrees, considered one of the highest temperatures on Earth since such measurements began.
Fire tornadoes are also meteorological rarities that are "a little difficult to wrap our heads around," meteorologist Ben Gelber told The New York Times. "Of course, the towering clouds created by fires, we've all seen that. But the tornadic feature or multiple fire whirls, that's just incredible."
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