This article is about fires. For other uses, see Firestorm (disambiguation).
High intensity conflagration
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A view of one of the Tillamook Burn fires in August 1933
A firestorm is a conflagration which attains such intensity that it creates and sustains its own wind system. It is most commonly a natural phenomenon, created during some of the largest bushfires and wildfires. Although the term has been used to describe certain large fires,[1] the phenomenon's determining characteristic is a fire with its own storm-force winds from every point of the compass towards the storm's center, where the air is heated and then ascends.[2][3]
The Black Saturday bushfires, the 2021 British Columbia wildfires, and the Great Peshtigo Fire are possible examples of forest fires with some portion of combustion due to a firestorm, as is the Great Hinckley Fire. Firestorms have also occurred in cities, usually due to targeted explosives, such as in the aerial firebombings of London, Hamburg, Dresden, and Tokyo, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
^Scawthorn, Charles, ed. (2005). Fire following earthquake. Technical Council on Lifeline Earthquake Engineering monograph. Reston, VA: American Society of Civil Engineers. p. 68. ISBN 978-0-7844-0739-4.
^Alexander Mckee's Dresden 1945: The Devil's Tinderbox
^"Problems of Fire in Nuclear Warfare (1961)" (PDF). Dtic.mil. Archived from the original (PDF) on 18 February 2013. Retrieved 11 May 2016. A fire storm is characterized by strong to gale force winds blowing toward the fire everywhere around the fire perimeter and results from the rising column of hot gases over an intense, mass fire drawing in the cool air from the periphery. These winds blow the fire brands into the burning area and tend to cool the unignited fuel outside so that ignition by radiated heat is more difficult, thus limiting fire spread.
A firestorm is a conflagration which attains such intensity that it creates and sustains its own wind system. It is most commonly a natural phenomenon...
Sonic Firestorm is the second studio album by British power metal band DragonForce, released through Noise Records on 11 May 2004. It is the first album...
The Oakland firestorm of 1991 was a large suburban wildland–urban interface conflagration that occurred on the hillsides of northern Oakland, California...
climatic cooling effect that is hypothesized to occur after widespread firestorms following a large-scale nuclear war. The hypothesis is based on the fact...
Wikisource has original text related to this article: NOAA's finalized damage survey and analysis for the Lahaina wildfire In early August 2023, a series...
surpassed the Tubbs Fire (which had previously surpassed the 1991 Oakland Firestorm and the Cedar Fire) to become the single most destructive wildfire in...
New Zealand-Canadian professional wrestler, known by his ring name Adam Firestorm, who competed in North American independent promotions in the Pacific...
This is a list of fictional characters from DC Comics who are enemies of Firestorm. In alphabetical order (with issue and date of debut appearance)....
The Gates of Firestorm Peak is an adventure module for the second edition of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. The adventure...
bombs and incendiary devices on the city. The bombing and the resulting firestorm destroyed more than 1,600 acres (6.5 km2) of the city centre. Up to 25...
Caitlin Snow. All three usually have some connection to the superhero Firestorm. Various iterations of Killer Frost, primarily Crystal Frost and Louise...
Ramos Mejia production plant in Argentina. It is also sold under the name Firestorm or FS 9. Derivatives in other calibres include the Thunder 40 and Thunder...
American culture. The Arizona Christian athletic teams are called the Firestorm. The university is a member of the National Association of Intercollegiate...
and escalated them to massive proportions. A firestorm ensued. In the words of Gess and Lutz, in a firestorm "superheated flames of at least 2,000 degrees...
known as Firestorm. He first appeared in Firestorm (vol. 3) #1 (July 2004), and was created by Dan Jolley and ChrisCross. Another Firestorm series began...
comics published by DC Comics. Her first appearance was in The Fury of Firestorm #23 (May 1984), created by writer Gerry Conway and artist Rafael Kayanan...
II, 330 American B-29s rain incendiary bombs on Tokyo, touching off a firestorm that kills upwards of 100,000 people, burns a quarter of the city to the...
remains unreleased in North America. There are 2 versions of the game, Firestorm (Fire in the Japanese version) and Blizzard. Both versions of this game...
The 1998 Florida wildfires, sometimes referred to as the Florida Firestorm, was a wildfire event involving several thousand separate woodland and mixed...
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