A wildfire in southwestern France grew so powerful that its plume of smoke became thunder, sparking lightning that struck the ground and ignited a new blaze, French officials said.
In other words, that means the inferno was no longer being driven by the weather. It was doing its thing. The thundercloud also produced strong and unpredictable winds that could direct the flames in new directions.
The phenomenon, called pyrocumulonimbus, or pyroCb, is rare in Europe and has been recorded mostly in North America and Australia, where it only occurs in some of the most intense fires. The national federation of firefighters in France said it had never recorded one in the country.
The fire broke out near Saumos on July 22 and has since burned more than 420 square kilometers (162 square miles) of forest and scrub, damaged or destroyed more than 240 homes and forced 220,000 people to evacuate in the Gironde.
At 6.20pm on Friday, two days after the fire started, the fire and rescue department said it had produced a pyrocumulonimbus. The cloud weakened once as the humidity increased, then re-formed several times.
From time to time, the heat and smoke rose up into a huge black thundercloud, electrified and ignited from within.
