The speed of the Creek Fire also likely exceeded that of the Camp Fire, which two years ago killed 85 people and destroyed nearly the entire town of Paradise in a matter of hours, said Neil Lareau, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Nevada Reno.

“So this is really out there in full-on outlier territory at this point, as far as the evolution of this event,” Lareau said.

Fire officials estimated Monday afternoon the Creek Fire had torched about 78,790 acres in the Sierra National Forest and sent thousands of people fleeing ahead of the fire.

Lareau said that judging from satellite images, the fire is likely much larger.

Record heat, steep terrain and thousands of dead and dying trees likely combined to create conditions for an unusually fast-moving and extremely hot fire that in some instances created its own weather, with lightning and thunder, weather and fire officials said.

What we know about the Creek Fire:More evacuations ordered as fire continues to grow

It also created a plume of smoke called a “pyrocumulous cloud,” which reached 45,000 to 50,000 feet high and covered an area about 50 miles wide, said Carlos Molina, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Hanford.

He said the Creek Fire cloud was larger than the “firenado” produced by the Carr Fire in Redding in 2018.

“The size of the cloud and the depth of the cloud exceeds what we’ve seen in a lot of these cases,” Lareau said. “The Carr Fire cloud pushed up to about 35,000 feet. This one is up to and above 45 feet in altitude.”

The cloud was so high in the atmosphere that airliners, which typically cruise at 35,000 to 40,000 feet, had to detour around the huge plume, Molina said. 

The giant cloud plume did not dissipate and was still visible Sunday.

“Its just a pretty insane thing to be seen in the morning, with cloud tops of 45,000 feet,” Lareau said.

California fire tracker:Map traces current fires burning across state in real-time

The steep terrain, heat and thick trees and brush within the fire helped to create two large fire tornadoes Saturday. One of the firenadoes happened mid-afternoon near Mammoth Pool Reservoir and another around 8:30 p.m. east of Bass Lake, Lareau said.

 

Fire tornadoes like the one that churned over Redding in 2018 are rarely seen.

Lareau said the Carr Fire tornado had winds up to 140 mph, while the tornadoes over the Creek Fire had winds blowing about 100 mph, putting them in the EF-1 and EF-2 range.

“I think it would be fair to call these fire tornadoes in the full-fledge sense, in that these are not fire whirls. These are extremely deep, extremely powerful, damaging winds in their own right,” he said.

While the wind speed was higher in the Carr Fire tornado, the magnitude of the firenadoes in the Creek Fire was greater, covering a larger area.

Related:Destructive and deadly, yes. But unprecedented? Trying to understand the Carr Fire twister

Chris Donnelly, chief of the Huntington Lake Volunteer Fire Department, said he witnessed the extreme fire behavior first-hand. He and his crew watched as the fire raced 2,000 feet up a canyon out of Big Creek to the lake on Saturday.

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“As the fire comes up that 2,000 feet it creates this huge wind and it preheats everything above it,” he said. “And so you’ve got this thunderstorm that builds and we had cumulus clouds over 55,000 feet over Huntington Lake.”

Donnelly, a Catholic monk who has volunteered at the department in the summers for the past 22 years, said he had never seen anything like the fire he witnessed Saturday.

Creek Fire evacuee:‘We hope we have a town to return to when this is all over’

When the fire came up the hill it created a gigantic plume of smoke that created its own weather, including lightning and thunder, he said.

“It was like midnight out there and lightning and thunder coming out of the smoke cloud that the fire created,” he said. “Scary, yeah, we were doing lookout. Scary’s the right word.”

Lareau said that type of fire weather is dangerous for firefighters on the ground.

“There’s no doubt this thing is producing its own weather. Which obviously is extremely hazardous. It’s kind of the worst-case scenario for firefighters,” he said. “The thing is creating its own downbursts (lightning strikes) the fire behavior becomes extremely unpredictable.”

And Mother Nature is not done with the Creek Fire.

Extreme heat is in the forecast, along with winds out of the west, which can pose a danger to nearby communities around Bass Lake, North Fork and Shaver Lake.