Watch: Rare Fire Tornado Seen During Canadian Wildfires

As wildfires continue to burn across Canada, a rare fire tornado developed on the shore of a lake.

British Columbia Wildfire Service posted a video of the unusual event on X, formerly known as Twitter. Overnight ground crews responding to the fire captured the video on Aug. 17. According to the service, the tornado developed due to a passing cold front in the Gun Lake area in the Bendor Range Complex near Lillooet.

The Bendor Range Complex has several active fires and the wildlife service said the cold front passed through between 3 and 6 a.m. on Aug. 17. A combination of the cold front, a reduced dew point, and strong winds from the southwest bolstering the fire’s flames led to both a higher intensity fire and formation of a “fire whirl,” also called a fire tornado.

“Another important factor in the formation of whirls is adequate vorticity, a measure of the atmosphere’s tendency to spin or rotate,” BC Wildfire Service said. “Complex terrain, downslope winds, and the passing cold front provided the necessary conditions for the formation of this fire whirl over Gun Lake.”

According to the BC Wildfire Service, fire whirls are “an incredibly rare phenomenon.”

“These unique conditions and extreme fire behavior are not experienced on the majority of fires in B.C.,” the service said in the post.