Fire tornado could have caused damage near Jasper campground: Researcher [Video]

According to a team of tornado researchers, the Jasper National Park wildfire may have spawned a rare fire tornado – or even two.

Aaron Jaffe, a lead surveyor for the Northern Tornadoes Project (NTP), is part of a team studying the destruction left by a fire storm in the Wabasso Campground area this summer.

“I didn’t even fully know that a fire could produce that much wind damage,” he said.

“It was these huge areas over a kilometre wide and several kilometres long at a time of just almost every single tree uprooted and snapped.”

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Jaffe and his team recently spent a week surveying the area, around 10 kilometres south of the townsite, where the wildfire grew so intense that updrafts created a pyroculonimbus cloud.

Jaffe said drone, radar, and satellite images of the site …