Wildfire produces ‘thunder cloud’ as blaze burns in British Columbia

A wildfire in southern British Columbia, Canada, produced a brief "thunder cloud" on Wednesday evening (16 August).

Satellite footage from the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) at Colorado State University shows a smoke plume from a pyrocumulonimbus cloud, which - according to the Royal Meteorological Society (RMetS) - is created by intense heat from the Earth’s surface.

Pyrocumulonimbus clouds were observed during the devastating Australian bushfires in late 2019 and early 2020, as the blazes "created their own weather systems," RMetS said.