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- Hacker News
- Spain is also completely on fire - there's a website that collects all official information and locates every fire on a map:
https://xn--incendiosespaa-2nb.es/ (in Spanish)
It is disheartening to see how everything is basically in red.
by j1elo - If you unzoom even more, even the sea is red. I don't think this map shows what you think it does.by rixed
- Statements like these embolden climate change deniers because they look so panicked beyond reason. Spain isn’t “completely on fire” and Spain frequently has fires like California.
You need to quantify in sq km or some other objective unit what makes this so unique.
by kortilla - spain loses ~240,000 acres to wildfire every year. this is larger than normal, but fire is normal there
- Is it me or is the map broken as it's blocked by OSM. I get tiles that say: Access blocked ..... osm.wiki/Blocked ?by zipy124
- Lets have a resume:
Biggest wildfire in the history of Spain: 2026
Biggest wildfire in the modern history of Norway: 2026
Biggest wildfire in Austria: 2026
Biggest wildfire in Germany: 2025
Biggest wildfire in Denmark: 2025
Biggest wildfire in UK: 2025
Biggest wildfire in Montenegro: 2025
Biggest wildfire in Serbia: 2025
Biggest wildfire in Albania: 2025
Biggest wildfire in Bulgaria: 2025
Biggest wildfire in Malta: 2025
Biggest wildfire in Ukraine: 2024
Biggest wildfire in USA: 2024
Biggest wildfire in Greece: 2023
Biggest wildfire in Switzerland: 2023
Biggest wildfire in Czechia: 2022
Biggest wildfire in Slovenia: 2022
Biggest wildfire in Italy: 2021
Biggest wildfire in Turkey: 2021
Biggest wildfire in Poland: 2020
Biggest wildfire in Ireland: 2020
Plus some special honorary mentions for some of the largest wildfires in:
- France: 2026
- Lithuania: 2026,
- Estonia: 2026.
- Cyprus: 2025
Almost every European country and USA suffered the biggest wildfires in their whole history in the same period as the Ukraine war. France still can sing bingo. Almost there.
Hungary on the other hand, suffered their biggest wildfire in 2012. One hurrah for Hungary. And Croatia in 2017, congratulations. I wonder what is different to the other countries here. They must clean their forests really good.
by pvaldes - I will be surprised if the climate crisis doesn’t eventually escalate to the point where basically everyone agrees that geoengineering of some kind is worth the risk.by senderista
- We can't even agree on wasting less fuel or moving to less damaging fuel sources.by jeroenhd
- Could start with Sulphur spray into atmosphere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_aerosol_injectio...
Wonder how much 2020 Bunker Fuel ban contributed.
by rasz - Eventually it might. We don't have any good ideas about what would help without things getting much worse.
What we do need now is finally the determination to fight climate change. We have all the tools at our disposal to eliminate any fossil fuel burning within some years. We should finally take this as the priority it should be.
by _ph_ - I think the more short term achievable one is better forest management; another thread mentions this is a big monoculture of pine trees planted nearly 200 years ago. Diversify the forests, create fire breaks, have a rapid fire response plan ready, improve water management, etc.
I'm worried that geoengineering will upset the balance of things even more, a temporary and short-term solution for incidents.
by Cthulhu_ - We are already doing some geo-engineering. That’s what putting megatonnes of greenhouse gases up the atmosphere is. We’re just too stupid and shorts-sighted to do it in any useful way.
That said, piling more geo-engineering on top of the problem will not solve it. It will just create more issues with unforeseen consequences and instability. What we really need to do is to reduce emissions. It’s much simpler and cheaper than any form of geo-engineering you could think of to mitigate the consequences.
by kergonath - Geoengineering proposals spring from the same impulse as climate denial — anything to avoid consequences for those contributing to the crisis.by rectang
- I think the only reason it doesn't come to this is the risk of liability over possible blow backs.
Say they start sulfur injection or whatever, and a year later there are crop failures in India. While it could have happened anyway, there is now a plausible chance that it can be pinned on who ever did the geoengineering. The amount of scapegoating on any climate issue would be wild.
by ColdStream - We get these in the Australian bushfire season, the weather systems they create can flip a 10 tonne fire appliance. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/31/volun...by locusm
- If you the are in the area and hesitating to evacuate, or if you want to realize what terrible phenomenon you are you facing. Watch this great documentary about the tragedy that unfolded in Portugal a few years ago. Leave now.
"Witness to Disaster | National Geographic" - https://youtu.be/clTeqIpGBeU
- At 12:00 pyrocumulus is explained.
At 29:00 pyrocumulonimbus is explained.
by dolmen - Pedantic cloud enjoyer here, the article should name this a pyrocumulus not pyrocumulonimbus - the nimbus part means 'rain-bearing' in meteorology, fire clouds don't rain.by falloon
- Apparently this cloud can create lightning and its own wind thoughby nunez
- It rains ash. While it’s a metaphorical use of “rain” it’s physically accurate.
- During the press conference describing this the speaker claims they’re working with meteorologists from France Météo supporting the term at 6:30 https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xas3lw2
Technical details in the video link start around 3:34 for those interested
Excuse the French for the non Francophones but trying to be detailed and exacting here on why this isn’t bad journalism to use that term
by sjbzbeiks - The term used by the UK Royal Meteorological Society is pyrocumulonimbus: https://www.rmets.org/metmatters/pyrocumulonimbus-clouds
- To be fair, it's not the article that's the problem. Pyrocumulonimbus is the accepted scientific name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumulonimbus_flammagenitus.by realslimjd
- Incorrect. These fires basically create their own weather systems. All that smoke also contains a lot of water in the material that is burning. (That makes sense. They are trees, after all.) When the smoke reaches high enough in the atmosphere the smoke cools and water can precipitate out (rain) and also lightning potentially producing more fires.
- Pyrocumulonimbus [1] appears to be the most extreme version of pyrocumulus [2] which, coincidentally, was observed halfway around the world in Washington State this week [3].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumulonimbus_flammagenitus
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flammagenitus_cloud
[3]: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/climate-lab/little...
by divbzero - Cumulonimbus has been separated from its etymological roots. It now refers to the physics that can produce deep convection, high clouds, and the formation of an anvil shape (along with lightning, etc). The convection that produces a cumulonimbus rain cloud is present in a pyrocumulonimbus cloud. The word isn't wrong.by dualvariable
- There's a good chance that conflagrations during WWII generated such clouds. There are well established incidents of such in Germany (and Japan) (ref: https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/91/9/2010bam... , Hamburg, Dresden, etc) but nothing for certain in France. The British attacks on Royan which destroyed 85% of it with high explosive and napalam would be the most likely site.by superkuh
- Just had the same here in Washington state for the Little Giant fire. Great image in the article. We had another fire cloud behind Rainier the other day, and saw it from the Rount Mainier farm - it really looked like the volcano was smoking up and ready to top-off. <clench>
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/climate-lab/little...
by ynac - "East" of Seattle is certainly one way to describe it (100 miles east).by loeg
- Some more photos without a paywall. https://westseattleblog.com/2026/07/about-that-huge-cloud-vi...