‘Like a blowtorch’: Powerful winds fueled tornadoes of flame in Tubbs Fire 
 
 The firestorm flipped over cars, like one on Dogwood Drive in the devastated Coffey Park neighborhood of Santa Rosa. The firestorm flipped over cars, like one on Dogwood Drive in the devastated Coffey Park neighborhood of Santa Rosa. Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 83 Caption Close ‘Like a blowtorch’: Powerful winds fueled tornadoes of flame in Tubbs Fire 1 / 83 Back to Gallery 
 
 The Tubbs Fire that raged through Santa Rosa last week unleashed a series of fiery tornadoes powerful enough to flip cars, yank trees out of the ground and rip homes apart, fire scientists said Wednesday. 
 
 Gusts of up to 73 mph were recorded at the weather stations after the fires broke out Oct. 8, but the extraordinary damage documented during postmortem evaluations indicated that much more powerful forces were at play. 
 
 “We had trees ripped out of the ground, cars turned over, garage doors ripped off their hinges and wrapped around trees in the front yards,” said Scott Upton, the northern region chief for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, and an expert on fire behavior. “It was no different than a hurricane, really, but instead of rain we had a fire event. I’ve been in this business 30 years and it’s the worst I’ve seen.” 
 
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 Upton said fire whirls, also known as fire tornadoes, probably happened in all the North Bay fires, but the most destructive evidence was found in Santa Rosa neighborhoods flattened by the Tubbs Fire, which has killed at least 22 people and burned 36,432 acres. Recovery teams are still searching for remains in the rubble. 
 
 The homes destroyed in the city’s Fountaingrove and Coffey Park neighborhoods burned in rapid succession. As flames driven by powerful winds slammed into the neighborhoods, the heat rose up, pulling the wind with it and creating a kind of vortex of air that circled around at hurricane-force speeds. 
 
 “Think about the massive release of heat in a fire like that, and then the wind gets obstructed by homes and you get the eddying,” Upton said. “The hot air mixes with cooler air, and that’s when it will start to turn, creating a fire whirl.” 
 
 The whirling winds blew fire sideways into homes in Santa Rosa, peeled off roofs, and even lifted and turned vehicles. Survivors recounted running out of their homes into the equivalent of a blast furnace, with embers flying everywhere amid a terrible gale. 
 
 “They can be incredibly powerful if you add more heat or wind or fuel, like in this fire,” he said. 
 
 Upton compared the situation to Lake County’s Rocky Fire in August 2015, when superheated flames, fueled by dry brush, sent huge clouds of smoke as far as 35,000 feet into the atmosphere, where they actually formed ice caps, pushing out wind in every direction. 
 
 In the Tubbs Fire, superheated air also lifted off the ground and created wind, but that’s where the similarities end. 
 
 Upton said fire tornadoes normally occur in open spaces, kind of like the way dust devils form on farmland and fields. He said the the 2003 Cedar Fire, which burned 280,000 acres, destroyed 2,232 homes and killed 15 people in San Diego County, is the closest comparison. 
 
 Just like the Wine Country blazes, the Cedar Fire spread rapidly as a result of Santa Ana winds and fire tornadoes. The 1991 Oakland Hills Fire, which killed 25 people and destroyed 3,500 houses, also created its own weather — a firestorm. 
 
 Fire whirls can be extremely violent. They have been known to lift all-terrain vehicles off the ground. In 1926, a fire whirl in San Luis Obispo lifted an entire home into the air and carried it across a field before dropping it. Two people were killed. 
 
 The phenomenon can’t happen without strong winds and dry fuel, which have been in abundance throughout Northern California. 
 
 The night the fires started on Oct. 8, the winds were a steady 40 mph, pushing flames east to west through a valley in the hills along Petrified Forest and Mark West Springs roads, feeding it like oxygen nourishes a torch, and driving it into the flatland neighborhoods. 
 
 “Just like water flows from higher to lower elevation, winds flow down a pressure gradient as they go from high pressure to low pressure,” said Max Moritz, a wildfire specialist with the UC Cooperative Extension. “When they get concentrated, like through a mountain pass, they will speed up, like a river going through a narrow channel.” 
 
 Moritz said powerful winds also drove the Hanley Fire, which burned almost the exact same area in 1964. 
 
 That fire, which ignited when a hunter discarded a cigarette, burned 83,000 acres over a week and leveled 84 homes, 24 summer cabins and countless farm buildings; included was the historic Tubbs Mansion. Nobody was killed in the fire, which was finally halted on the north perimeter of Santa Rosa, but those who fought it were traumatized. 
 
 “This is the craziest fire I’ve ever seen,” Grant King, the chief of the Guerneville Fire Department, told The Chronicle at the time. “The wind just hangs back, then fire comes in a rush with the wind, and you’re dead.” 
 
 The wind-driven Tubbs Fire shot out of the same canyon into Fountaingrove and Coffey Park. 
 
 “It was a very different kind of fire that happened Sunday night,” said Ken Pimlott, the director of Cal Fire. “The fire was almost horizontal. When it hit those homes it was like a blowtorch. With all those fires burning, it generated so much heat that it created its own circular patterns.” 
 
 Upton said the Atlas Fire, which blasted through Napa Valley homes and wineries, threw embers way out in front, causing spot fires, and also occasionally formed fire whirls, but it didn’t display as much wind power as the Tubbs Fire did. 
 
 “I've seen fires melt cars and literally reduce them to little more than metal and aluminum pooled on the ground,” he said, but he hadn’t seen destruction like he saw last week. “To flip a car over has to be some significant winds.” 
 
 Peter Fimrite is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: pfimrite@sfchronicle.com ||||| Cal Fire Battalion Chief Gino DeGraffenreid was about to jump back into his truck after loading a fleeing family into a police car when he thought he heard someone yelling amid the roaring wind and fire in the hills northeast of Santa Rosa. 
 
 He ran toward the voice and saw them: a couple wearing next to nothing, freezing amid an unprecedented fire belching smoke and raining firebrands. 
 
 “They were soaking wet,” DeGraffenreid said. “They had awoken to a smoke detector, jumped in the pool and for about an hour had been in the pool trying to stay away from heat.” 
 
 He wrapped them in T-shirts, put them into his truck and caravaned with police down Michele Way to Mark West Springs Road, a white-knuckle trip with fire and intense heat — a burning neighborhood already wiped clean of all that had once been so familiar. 
 
 “All of the landmarks — the houses, the fences, the goofy Volkswagen bug — all of the visual landmarks were gone,” DeGraffenreid said. 
 
 Gale-force winds fueled an unprecedented number of wildfires that started almost simultaneously after night fell Oct. 8 in places across the North Coast region, killing at least 40 people in four counties and forcing entire communities to evacuate, including about 50,000 Sonoma County residents. 
 
 The battle to contain fires covering more than 178,000 acres across the region continues still. 
 
 Tracing the start of what’s now called the Tubbs fire — named for its origin near Tubbs Lane just north of the Calistoga city limits — shows how one fire overwhelmed emergency personnel, erupting amid Diablo winds on a Sunday night when many were asleep. 
 
 In just over four hours, the Tubbs fire made a horrific 12-mile run from Calistoga, in the northern edge of the Napa Valley, into a dense city neighborhood in west Santa Rosa. It raced through ranches and rural communities, sweeping through million-dollar homes in Santa Rosa’s hillside Fountaingrove development and tract neighborhoods in Larkfield-Wikiup. At 2 a.m., the ferocity of the firestorm propelled it across Highway 101, an unprecedented leap that spread flames into a commercial district on Cleveland Avenue and hundreds of tightly packed homes in Coffey Park. 
 
 The fire traveled at a pace of about 3 mph, burning up about an acre a minute while spewing burning embers a half-mile or more ahead, forcing entire neighborhoods to flee in the middle of the night. 
 
 “For a fire to move that fast is incredible,” said Eric Hoffman, a retired assistant chief with Cal Fire who rejoined the state fire agency to help manage the firefight and later calculated the fire’s speed. 
 
 Authorities have said nothing about what caused the fire. 
 
 Erratic winds 
 
 One week ago, as dry, strong winds began to buffet the region after night fell, fires began erupting in a chaotic pattern across Sonoma County, like bombs going off in every direction. 
 
 Flames engulfed a home on Mark West Station Road near the Sonoma County Airport. An electrical box was smoking on Maverick Court in the hills above Larkfield. Officers went door to door in Santa Rosa’s West End neighborhood as a Pierson Street home burned. 
 
 The 50 mph winds flung branches every which way and knocked drought-stricken trees off weakened roots, combining with downed power lines to block major roads from Highway 101 in Sonoma County to Highway 128 north of Calistoga. ||||| Firefighters were able to beat back a powerful wildfire that bore down on a dry Southern California city, limiting the damages to a single house and curbing the threat to hundreds more. 
 
 But the difficult conditions that helped fuel the 4 1/2 square-mile blaze in Riverside County on Wednesday could be even worse in parts of the state Thursday. 
 
 "Today was a transition day," state fire spokesman Julie Hutchinson said. "Tomorrow is the big wind day" 
 
 Winds of 20-30 mph are expected, along with nearly non-existent humidity and an abundance of wildfire fuel. 
 
 "The grass, brush and trees are very volatile. They're ready to burn," Hutchinson said. "Everything is just very dry. And not just in Southern California, statewide." 
 
 Forecasters said high pressure would send strong winds through Southern California's passes and canyons and near coastal foothills Thursday. 
 
 The fire broke out just after noon about 90 miles east of Los Angeles in the largely undeveloped foothills of the San Bernardino Mountains north of the city of Banning, where hundreds evacuated their homes. 
 
 More than 400 firefighters helped by six helicopters and six air tankers turned the orange open flame near the city into sheets of white smoke and had the fire 35 percent contained by nightfall, county fire officials said. 
 
 The aircraft were grounded for the night and all evacuations were called off. 
 
 But the fire remained large and volatile as it moved away from Banning and toward the nearby communities of Beaumont and Cherry Valley. 
 
 The stand from firefighters came too late for Joe Kiener, 53, who lost the house he'd lived in since his mother bought it in the 1970s. 
 
 Kiener was home on a lunch break when he stepped outside to check on his barking dog and saw heavy smoke approaching. He took the dog and started to leave just as a deputy arrived to tell him to evacuate, but it wasn't easy. 
 
 "When I left I went around the corner and I got engulfed in a big cloud of smoke," said Kiener, who could see so little the deputy had to yell to him how to get out. 
 
 He got out safely, but the next time he saw the house was in a phone picture sent by his neighbor. The roof was on fire, and he knew it would be destroyed, but he shrugged off the loss. 
 
 "My mom passed away a month ago. The day before Easter," Kiener said. So that was the biggest thing that hurt my heart is losing her. Losing the house is just minimal. We can rebuild." 
 
 In Northern California, firefighters were battling fires fueled by gusty winds in wine country north of San Francisco. 
 
 In Sonoma County, a fire north of Calistoga was fifty percent contained after burning 125 acres. Another fire in nearby Napa County was fully contained after burning 75 acres. 
 
 In Butte County, a fast-moving blaze called the Panther Fire has burned about half a square mile since it was sparked Wednesday morning, state fire officials said. 
 
 State fire spokesman Daniel Berlant said the blazes across of California could be an ominous sign. 
 
 "Statewide, our fire activity is up over 60 percent of normal," Berlant said. "It has everything to do with the fact that conditions are so dry, then you add wind, making the perfect conditions for a fire." 
 
 "We're a bit drier than normal at this time and seeing conditions that we would usually see in June," Berlant said. "If this is an indicator of what's to come, then we're going to be in for a very busy fire season." ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Ben Rich updates the situation on the California wildfires 
 
 The most destructive wildfire raging in southern California has expanded significantly, scorching an area larger than New York City. 
 
 The Thomas Fire in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties has consumed 230,000 acres (930 sq km) in the past week. 
 
 Fanned by strong winds, it has become the fifth largest wildfire in recorded state history after it grew by more than 50,000 acres in a day. 
 
 Residents in coastal beach communities have been ordered to leave. 
 
 Image copyright NASA/EPA Image caption Satellite imagery shows the vast Thomas Fire, north of Los Angeles, which has spread as far as the Pacific coast 
 
 On Sunday, firefighters reported that 15% of the blaze had been contained but were forced to downgrade that to 10% as it continued to spread. 
 
 "This is a menacing fire, certainly, but we have a lot of people working very diligently to bring it under control," Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said. 
 
 Thousands of firefighters are working round the clock to tackle the blaze, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said. 
 
 The containment operation is not only being hampered by dry winds. It is proving challenging for firefighters because of the location and mountainous terrain. 
 
 Image copyright MARK RALSTON Image caption Firefighters face challenging conditions to contain the Thomas fire 
 
 An analyst with the California fire protection department, Tim Chavez, said the emergency services were struggling because "a hot interior" was in parts practically meeting the ocean, making access difficult. 
 
 "It's just a very difficult place to fight fire," Mr Chavez said, adding: "It's very dangerous and has a historical record of multiple fatalities occurring over the years." 
 
 The other fires hitting California are largely controlled, but 200,000 people have evacuated their homes and some 800 buildings have been destroyed since 4 December. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The Thomas fire has the potential to be one of the worst in California's history 
 
 Evacuation orders were issued overnight on Sunday for parts of Carpinteria close to Los Padres National Forest, about 100 miles (160km) northwest of Los Angeles. 
 
 Forecasters said wind speeds were expected to increase throughout the day, before dying down again overnight. 
 
 The local fire department tweeted pictures of a wall of flames advancing on homes on the outskirts of Carpinteria early on Sunday morning. 
 
 A member of the emergency services in Carpinteria said he would continue working alongside his colleagues until the fire was under complete control. 
 
 "What they did last night was amazing," firefighter Michael Gallagher said, adding: "They saved this entire community. 
 
 "We've been up, I'm at 29 hours straight, every other day... we are exhausted, but they're not coming off until this is done." 
 
 Meanwhile, actor Rob Lowe, who lives in Santa Barbara, a city of close to 100,000 people, tweeted that he was praying for his town as fires closed in. 
 
 "Firefighters making brave stands. Could go either way. Packing to evacuate now," Lowe added. 
 
 California has spent the past seven days battling wildfires. Six large blazes, and other smaller ones, erupted on Monday night in southern California. 
 
 The Thomas Fire - named according to where it started, near the Thomas Aquinas College - is by far the largest of the fires. 
 
 They swept through tens of thousands of acres in a matter of hours, driven by extreme weather, including low humidity, high winds and parched ground. 
 
 The authorities issued a purple alert - the highest level warning - amid what it called "extremely critical fire weather", while US President Donald Trump declared a state of emergency. 
 
 On Saturday, California Governor Jerry Brown described the situation as "the new normal" and predicted vast fires, fuelled by climate change, "could happen every year or every few years". 
 
 Several firefighters have been injured, but only one person has died - a 70-year-old woman who was found dead in her car on an evacuation route. 
 
 There are also fears the blaze will seriously hit California's multi-million dollar agricultural industry. ||||| Story highlights Cool onshore breezes and possible rain could weaken wildfire in Los Angeles 
 
 But rain prediction could bring lightning that may spark new fires 
 
 Fire is only 30% contained and threatens 4,000 homes 
 
 Sheriff deputies will pound on door if fires come close, resident says 
 
 Firefighters and homeowners were anxiously awaiting to learn Saturday whether the emergence of cool ocean breezes and possible rain will weaken a Los Angeles-area wildlfire that has burned 28,000 acres in two days and now threatens 4,000 homes. 
 
 The weather change could be a mixed blessing, however, because a chance of isolated thunderstorms this weekend brings a risk of lightning sparking new fires, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said. 
 
 The Los Angeles area fire, based in Ventura County, has damaged 15 residences and five commercial properties and has destroyed 25 outbuildings, fire authorities said. 
 
 The inferno, called the Springs Fire, raced about 10 miles beside upscale communities and through the Santa Monica Mountains since it began Thursday morning in Camarillo, California. It reached the Pacific Ocean shore, damaging a Navy shooting range next to coastal wetlands Friday. 
 
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 A total of 1,895 fire personnel, six fixed-wing air tankers and 11 helicopters have battled the blaze, but as of Saturday morning, the fire was only 30% contained, an improvement over Thursday's 10% and Friday's 20%. 
 
 That means 300 commercial properties and 250 outbuildings also are threatened, authorities said Saturday. 
 
 "A low pressure weather system has developed over the fire bringing higher humidity, lower temperatures, creating an opportunity to increase containment," the state fire agency said. 
 
 The region's so-called Santa Ana winds -- dubbed "devil winds" because they are warm and gusty out of the high desert -- have been fueling the Ventura County wildfire. The virtual absence of recent rain also created dry conditions ripe for the wildfires, whose season typically begins much later in the year. 
 
 "Onshore winds have begun to diminish this evening allowing for the expiration of all red flag warnings," the National Weather Service said late Friday. 
 
 The Santa Ana winds gusted to 45 mph the past two days, energizing the roaring flames. 
 
 Authorities ordered a mandatory evacuation Friday for the affluent Ventura County community of Hidden Valley, northwest of Los Angeles. Evacuations remained in effect Friday evening for several other areas. 
 
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 Federal funding was made available to cover 75% of firefighting costs, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced Friday. 
 
 Also on Friday, the Ventura County blaze crossed the scenic Pacific Coast Highway that separates the Santa Monica Mountains from the sea. There, small fires blackened the landscape surrounding a military firing range, a Navy spokeswoman said. 
 
 Several timber backdrops at the range were partially or completely burned, but because the facility sits in wetlands next to a lagoon, the fires weren't a threat to Naval Base Ventura County at Point Mugu, said spokeswoman Kimberly Gearhart. Ammunition isn't stored at the facility, she said. 
 
 "If something catches fire, it's in the best possible place because it's isolated and it's near water," Gearhart said. "Our biggest concern right now is smoke because it's a very smoldering fire, and as the wind shifts, it either blows smoke toward or away from us." 
 
 Evacuation orders were in effect in several areas on Saturday, but officials lifted orders for the campus of California State University, Channel Islands in Camarillo and for the Dos Vientos community in Newbury Park, authorities said. 
 
 Many Ventura County residents, especially those who live in or near the mountains, were on edge about the fires and possible evacuation. 
 
 "The sheriff said they would come pounding on the door if they came close," said Ventura County resident Elizabeth Dickenson. 
 
 Because of the smoke, ash and winds, people in affected areas were urged to be cautious and to avoid unnecessary outdoor activities, the Ventura County Air Pollution Control District said. 
 
 CNN meteorologist Chad Myers described the fire as an omen for California because the wildfire season isn't supposed to start until August or September. 
 
 Mountain chaparral and shrubs are dry because Los Angeles has received only half of its normal rainfall the past two years, Myers said. The vegetation is brown, instead of green from winter rain, he said. 
 
 The Los Angeles area has received less than 2 inches of rain since January, making the bone-dry region "definitely ripe for these fires," said William Patzert, a NASA climatologist. 
 
 But that could change soon. Rain showers could hit the area Sunday evening, forecasters say.
– Like earthquakes can unleash tsunamis, strong winds and the California wildfires apparently set loose another type of natural disaster: fire tornadoes. And the San Francisco Chronicle says the fire-filled tornadoes that hit Santa Rosa last week, driven by nearly 80mph winds, wreaked major havoc, tossing cars, pulling trees out of the ground, and ripping the roofs off of houses. "I've been in this business 30 years and it's the worst I've seen," Scott Upton, a chief for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, says of the tornadoes created during the Tubbs Fire. The Chronicle explains the science behind the tornado formation: As powerful winds drive the fire's flames into neighborhoods, the heat rises and draws those gusts up with it, creating the tornado, or "fire whirl," a vortex of hot and cool air capable of mass destruction. This type of event, also referred to as a "fire devil," can be so strong it's capable of lifting an entire home in the air; the paper notes one such incident that took place in 1926. The location of the neighborhoods affected by the Tubbs Fire also exacerbated things: The wind sped up as it pushed the fire through a valley and toward residences, creating what Ken Pimlott, the head of CalFire, calls "a very different kind of fire." It was "almost horizontal," he says. "When it hit those homes, it was like a blowtorch." The Press Democrat details the Tubbs Fire's 12-mile "deadly march" from its point of origin in Calistoga to Santa Rosa. Curious to know what one of these frightening flame-storms looks like without getting too close? Mashable features a video, in which firefighters filmed a recent fire tornado raging through central Portugal. Newsweek has footage, too, out of California and Texas.