On April 5, Easter Sunday, a “smoke whirl” (sometimes referred to as a “smokenado”) towered over south-central Kansas, near Haviland in Kiowa County.
The vortex formed during an intense grass fire as firefighters worked to contain the blaze. The phenomenon was fueled by critical fire weather, including dry conditions and strong wind gusts of up to 40 mph.
A smoke whirl (also known as a pyrocumulus vorticé) is a spinning vortex of vertical air, smoke, or flames that can develop when intense heat from a wildfire combines with unstable atmospheric conditions and strong winds. They are dangerous because they can rapidly spread embers, shift direction suddenly, and increase the intensity of a fire, making containment efforts difficult.
Sometimes these whirls can also carry fire, in which case they’re called fire whirls. A fire whirl, also commonly known as a fire devil, or, as a fire tornado, firenado, fire swirl, or fire twister, is a whirlwind induced by a fire. These whirls can range in size from less than one foot to over 500 feet in diameter, and large fire whirls can have the intensity of a small tornado.
However, while smoke whirls and fire whirls resemble a tornado, they are typically formed by turbulent wind and updrafts near the fire rather than a traditional storm system.
This was not the only fire event in the region in 2026; earlier in the year, on February 17, fire whirls and “firenadoes” were reported during high-wind wildfires near Englewood, Kansas, with wind gusts recorded between 50–70 mph.
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