A firestorm is a conflagration which attains such intensity that it creates and sustains its own wind system. It is most commonly a natural phenomenon, created during some of the largest bushfires and
A view of one of the Tillamook Burn fires in August 1933
A firestorm after the bombing of Hiroshima
A picture of a pyro-cumulonimbus taken from a commercial airliner cruising at about 10 km. In 2002 various sensing instruments detected 17 distinct pyrocumulonimbus cloud events in North America alone.
Joseph Pennell's 1918 prophetic Liberty bond poster calls up the pictorial image of a destroyed New York City, totally engulfed in a firestorm. At the time, the armaments available to the world's various air forces were not powerful enough to produce such a result.
On 6 and 9 August 1945, the United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively, during the final days of World War II. The aerial bombings killed
Firestorm
…Firestorms have also occurred in cities, usually due to targeted explosives, such as in the aerial firebombings of Hamburg, Dresden, and Tokyo, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. A firestorm is created as a result of the stack effect as the heat of the original fire draws in more and more of the surrounding air. This draft can…
Atomic bomb mushroom clouds over Hiroshima (left) and Nagasaki (right)
Situation of the Pacific War on 1 August 1945 White and green: Areas controlled by Japan Red: Areas controlled by the Allies Gray: Areas controlled by the Soviet Union (neutral)
U.S. Army propaganda poster depicting Uncle Sam preparing the public for the invasion of Japan after the end of the war with Germany and Italy
A B-29 over Osaka on 1 June 1945