Matthew's Journal

We went to the Inverness fireworks display on Monday. It was good fun, but that's not really what this post was about. I observed a curious phenomenon by the bonfire, and I was wondering if anyone could explain it.

The fire itself was constructed almost entirely of wooden pallets, and burned quickly, but with quite a bit of smoke. There was also a fair breeze, blowing the smoke sideways. What I noticed was an effect rather like a mini-tornado of smoke - from time to time a funnel-shaped cloud of smoke would drop out of the smoke cloud, touch the ground, and a twister-like cloud of smoke would run away from the fire for some distance before vanishing. Several of these happened during the bonfire.

Is this a well-understood occurance? I'd not seen it before...