Daniel Swain in The Los Angeles Times: The fire that devastated a Sierra town created a pyrocumulus cloud. What does that mean?

The Thomas fire created a huge pyrocumulus cloud in December 2017. The Mountain View fire that largely destroyed the small town of Walker, Calif., this week gave rise to a similar phenomenon.  UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said seeing such plume-dominated fires anywhere in the American West is “pretty extraordinary by late November.”