Volcano in Mexico blows its top, Australia fire tornado in real time (VIDEOS)

By Jason Samenow, Published: June 18, 2013 at 4:57 pmE-mail the writer

 

Here are two examples of Earth, wind and fire – to the extreme.

Smithsonian.com shares and discusses an incredible video of Mexico’s Popocatépetl volcano exploding Monday:
When you watch, notice the shock wave that shakes the sky and crashes down the mountain’s slope (at 5 seconds and 30 seconds in the video).

Smithsonian.com says the volcano – located southeast of Mexico City – is rated yellow, meaning people are (and have been) discouraged from being in its vicinity.

In no way related to this volcano, but sharing the common features of raging wind, flames and smoke, take a look at this fire tornado (video below).

“Pillar of fire” Australia- in real-time from chris tangey on Vimeo.

Said tornado charred parts of the Australian outback about last September. We shared video at the time, but as filmed in slow motion.

“For the very first time a series of wild clips are precisely corrected back to real-time, or as it happened speed,” says the description of this latest video, released in the last week.

How does a fire tornado form? Here’s NOAA’s explanation, which we posted in our previous post on the topic:

“While rare, fire tornadoes (also known as fire whirls) generally form when superheated air near the surface of a large fire zone rises rapidly in an airmass where sufficient horizontal or vertical vorticity (spin in the atmosphere) is also present. Much like a dust devil or whirlwind, the rapidly rising air above a wildfire can accelerate and turn the local vorticity into a tight vertical vortex, now composed of fire instead of dust.”