It’s a peculiar sight to see through the window of an aircraft: giant plumes of smoke bursting through the clouds 20,000 feet in the air.
“We were just on top of descent going into Kelowna and we felt the plane do quite the turn away from the clouds, so we looked outside the window and we just saw this big giant puff of smoke,” said Geoffrey Thompson, who was aboard an Air North flight.
Thompson was on a flight from Vancouver to Kelowna on Aug. 11 when he and other passengers saw the spectacle.
“When I looked out the window I was more shocked at first. It looked like a volcano erupting in the way that the smoke shot right up into the sky, especially that high,” said Thompson.
Then he, the crew and passengers descended into the smoke-filled Okanagan where the air quality has been listed as unhealthy for many of the past few days.
However, those giant plumes of smoke aren’t rare
“You typically see what you associate with mushroom clouds — that kind of column of heat and energy and particulates going up into the atmosphere, it can go several hundreds of thousands of feet into the air if there is nothing to kind of move it into the upper atmosphere,” said Forrest Tower with BC Wildfire Service.
“When those do develop — like I said, tens of thousands of feet into the air — at some point they could even start developing their own micro-weather systems, so lightning will develop within and around the area. They can also influence local weather.
“So it can be quite dramatic when you have large amounts of fuel and large energy builds up pushing all of that straight up, and if it doesn’t get moved anywhere, that just continues to increase the energy within the column.”
As the smoke continues to coat the Okanagan Valley, Interior Health recommends limiting time outdoors, monitoring your breathing and drinking plenty of water.
And if you happen to be on a plane getting a different perspective of the wildfires, pull out your phone and get some footage.
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