From a Sierra Online news article, “Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA, said in a tweet that a “massive pyrocumulus cloud [is] indicative of extreme fire behavior, & pyrotornado may have occurred” on the Creek Fire.“ Why it was snowing blackened tree debris, and yes oak leaves in the afternoon from the direction of Electric Eagle.
Sean as soon as you declared “THAT doesn’t look right something is wrong“ at about 3ish, THAT being smoke roiling from what looked as close as the other side of the Red Feather formation in front of Red Eagle, we began high-tailing it outta there. John lowered from Book of Spring Pages, & Sean and Marc from a project nearby, leaving some gear and cleaning the rest in a rush... Then we were all running down the steep trail with our heavy packs, with the smoke getting worse and glimmer of fire and wall of heat getting hotter. Got to the trucks and hucked everything in so fast it was a mess but we tore out of there. I was imagining the couple mile drive down the dust clouded road to Minarets road as being on fire. Thankfully it was fine yet. That road is so lined with downed trees and hundreds more dead trees that would so easily ensnare in a nightmare of possible ways. Worried about people we met going to Fallen Eagle but glad they had left already. We could see the hillside below Minarets covered in fire and spreading fast and knew it was going to jump the road too soon where we were. You could see the fire spreading on the hills towards Jackass Rock and the Fuller Buttes. We had hoped to go to the Balls later this weekend but knew by then that we should have left the whole loop road when we first noticed and said it seemed like a storm and even tornado was being created by the fire, debris carried aloft and coming down miles away, and next the rolling thunder and lightening flashes over that next hour or more.
