The Mosquito fire is prompting new evacuations on Thursday and alarming firefighters and meteorologists with its rapid spread and huge plume of smoke as it burns its way through dry, hilly terrain northeast of Sacramento.
At more than 8,000 acres, the fire remains uncontained and jumped the middle fork of the American River on Thursday as it moved into El Dorado County. Firefighters are encountering a combination of unfavorable conditions: extreme heat, bone-dry vegetation, steep terrain and gusty winds of up to 25 miles per hour, Chris Vestal, a spokesman for Cal Fire, the state’s firefighting agency, said Thursday afternoon.
The blaze has enough energy and heat that it has created its own weather patterns, he said, meaning that wind conditions and other meteorological features are dictated by the fire itself and do not follow forecasts for the area. That makes it more treacherous for firefighters to combat.
“It’s unpredictable,” Mr. Vestal said. “The conditions within a fire do not necessarily follow that same type of pattern that you and I would expect, if we were just outside of it.”
The Mosquito fire has also shot plumes of smoke up to 40,000 feet into the air, creating a giant pyrocumulus cloud filled with smoke and ash that can be seen from dozens of miles away.
“It’s large — we can see it from our office here in Sacramento,” said Anna Wanless, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service’s Sacramento branch. “This is probably one of the most intense fires that we have seen in our area so far this year.”
