Video footage from Friday shows a rotating inferno surrounded by smoke in the Pacific Palisades fire that has devastated the LA area.

Aerial firefighters have always been a critical line of defense against raging wildfires. But increasingly extreme blazes and ...

Fire whirl, fire devil, fire tornado or even firenado — scientists, firefighters and regular folks use multiple terms to describe similar phenomena, and they don’t always agree on what’s what. Some ...

Firefighters in California face a rare and dangerous phenomenon - High winds and severely dry conditions have created a ...

As if they aren’t already facing enough, firefighters in California also could encounter a rare but dangerous phenomenon in which wildfires create their own weather.

video taken by KTLA from the Palisades fires shows fire tornadoes or fire whirls forming. While they may look similar to a tornado associated with a thunderstorm, there is a key difference.

A Jan. 9 Threads post (direct link, archive link) shows what appears to be two tornadoes moving through a burning rural landscape. “Did you know that Cali gets fire tornadoes?!” the post reads.

But Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA, told USA TODAY that it instead appears to be an example of a fire whirl, which is “more akin to a dust devil than a tornado” and is less severe.

The advisory, which runs into Wednesday, didn’t mention tornadoes, but meteorologist Todd Hall said they're possible given the extreme conditions. A look at fire tornados: Fire whirl ...

Fire whirl, fire devil, fire tornado or even firenado — scientists, firefighters and regular folks use multiple terms to describe similar phenomena, and they don’t always agree on what’s what.