Monday Mail: Humidity impedes the apocalypse

Fans of the movie genre know "apocalyptic" can be the surreal feeling you've wandered onto the set.

You know the movies I mean: post-apocalyptic, dystopian films like Mad Max, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Mad Max Fury Road, The Book of Eli, I Am Legend, Waterworld, etc.

Some people have seen the apocalyptic in person, like those who've been to war or been caught in a natural disaster -- those who have walked among the ruins and sorted through the wreckage, as we now replay marking the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

Closer to home, we're more accustomed to tornadoes, of course -- sometimes floods, but mostly tornadoes -- and that's good, in a way: Tornadoes don't stick around. They hit and run. Floods and hurricanes may linger.

Firestorm

Out West, one type of tornado will endure, because it's made of flame.

When a wind-driven, drought-fueled wildfire moving through a forest generates enough heat, it starts "crowning," or eating the tree canopy like dry shrubbery. This can create a feedback that generates a vortex or spinning "fire whirl," roaring like a tornado of fire.

I witnessed this in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana in the year 2000 (been there, done that, bought the T-shirt -- no seriously: I have a T-shirt). That dry year, fires were everywhere out in Big Sky country; you could see each one spewing smoke and flame on the distant mountain ridges, as you drove up the highway.

So much smoke and ash filled the air that it nearly blacked out the sun, making mid-afternoon look like late evening, the high sun as dim as a blood moon, the countryside smothered in haze.

It was like an alien landscape from another planet, until you got to the interstate, and then it seemed apocalyptic -- like everyone gassing up at the truck stops while fleeing the fires should have been stocking up on water, bread, milk, ammunition and all those other emergency supplies you need for the End Times.

In a way it was apocalyptic, because when wildfires burn that hot, they leave only charred poles that once were tree trunks. All else is gone.

It's a blackened, barren swath of rock and ash, until the weeds and wildflowers sprout again.

The Southeast this summer has been spared such a calamity, and El Nino may give us a wet winter as well. Our extreme drought of 2007 is a distant memory. We no longer warn smokers to mind their butts, or hikers to douse their campfires.

These days are like a steambath, outside, and we curse the humidity of our viscid air.

But it does us a favor, I'm reminded, when I turn on the TV news and see the West is in flames, the wildfires crowning.

We may have tornadoes, but at least we don't have to try to put them out.

Tim Chitwood, tchitwood@ledger-enquirer.com, 706-571-8508.

This story was originally published August 23, 2015 at 10:08 PM with the headline "Monday Mail: Humidity impedes the apocalypse ."