Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion Mono Lake area fire

fire on the mountain run boy run

this was the recent Mono Lake area sage brush fire started by lightning - my cousin took this picture in Lee Vining area, we could see the billowing up from 395 as far away as the stretch between Bishop and Mammoth and commented that we had never seen such an odd cloud at sunset over the Owens Valley.

Some of the cloud is cloud, some is smoke cloud, both lit up from below by the fire, and above by the setting sun. There were lightning flashes within the purely smoke areas over to the right, presumably from all the stirred-up charged particulate matter.

for any naysayers who wonder how much smoke was actually going up into the sky to contribute to that later glorious sunset picture ..... here are two pictures from earlier in the afternoon when it was first getting started.

(Pictures taken by my cousins Jesse and Carole on their day off after our Bishop to Kearsarge section hike).

news and their pic

Mono lake fire

That is quite a fire! When they get that big, the vapor released by the combustion makes its own thunderhead.

The news report is dated Aug 10. I am wondering if it is still burning out of control.

wow these are amazing photos. thank you for posting these. my mom and I drove down highway 395 from tahoe on the way to lone pine and saw this fire on 8/9. we weren't really sure what it was at first because it blended into the clouds seamlessly. it appeared to no longer be as active on 8/11, but we couldn't tell for sure.

up to date info on Indian Fire:

http://inciweb.org/incident/3148/

By the way, they have some great photos on the dropdown menu.

by the way, inciweb.org is the location where all wildfires nationally are documented.

Great photo!

The name of that type of cloud is Pyrocumulus.

http://wxguys.ssec.wisc.edu/2012/06/11/what-are-pyrocumulus-clouds/

The clouds in Harvey's picture look alot like an Ovanes Berberian painting. Artists and people living in Idaho where Berberian lives will know what I mean.