The Forestry Forum

 

 (https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10007/firedevil.jpg)

Called a fire devil.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2204468/Pictured-The-frightening-FIRE-tornado-whirled-Australian-outback-40-MINUTES.html

Yep, that's it, ours are usually smaller, but some out on the prairie have reached that size.  The small ones are kinda cute.

I have said it before and i will say it again i am glad i live where i do ,The ground doesn't try to swallow me up, every bug and animal is not trying to kill me and fire tornados do not exist.

I took a Forest Fire Control and Use course at Auburn as part of my degree (Wildlife Biology) and the instructor advised about fire devils and how they would sometimes jump fire breaks to restart fires. He even created a small one in class to show us the conditions needed to start one.

I have seen huge dust devils like that in the mid-east. In Saudi the populace was not as litter conscious as many other societies and we'd see plastic bags up there several hundred feet in the air sometimes. We used to call them the Saudi National bird. There was sometimes so much trash in the desert strong winds would blow so many plastic bags up against fences it would block the wind so much the fences would blow over.

We sometimes get fire whirls when doing site prep burns, nothing as large as the picture, but will still pick up  flaming logs and sticks and throw them around a bit. When you're burning a big chop job and that circle of fire closes it produces a lot of energy and air movement.
To sidetrack the post a little,  we were burning a chop job for site prep and caused a thunderstorm to develop. We checked the radar and all was clear, we created enough upward movement in our smoke column that the only thunderstorm in the entire state formed right over us. Fire will do some pretty unusual stuff at times.

Must be a Juniper Tree... :-\