The first full weekend of September, with the Line fire 20,000 acres in size and only 3% contained, a resident of San Bernardino County described the sky as looking “ exactly like a nuclear warhead had been set off .”
On a basic level, this makes sense: By that point, the Line fire had already released more energy into the atmosphere than a dozen atomic bombs. And just as nuclear blasts produce a distinctive mushroom cloud, uncontrolled wildfires can be powerful enough to generate their own weather.
When wood and other vegetation combust, it they produce four main compounds: carbon dioxide, smoke (itself a mix of toxic ingredients like carbon monoxide, methane, benzene and many more), heat and water vapor. Of those, carbon dioxide is the least relevant to the local weather — while it plays a major role in the global climate, that is more because of its long lifespan rather than its immediate potency…