The air around it heats up. Hot air rises. The hotter the air, the more and faster it rises.
A large fire makes that whooshing sound because whatever air isn’t consumed to feed the fire heats up and rushes upwards with the smoke. This is also the type of feedback that can lead to a firestorm, as the air rushing upwards cools, come backs down, and creates convection thus fueling the fire.
Look up the firebombing of Dresden for a good study of how this happens. Lot of people can die super fast when that happens.
Edit: found a story on it. Good read
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-02-10-mn-30388-story.html
Edit edit: here’s some basic stuff on firestorms
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestorm
It’s the sucking the fire creates as a side effect of it using up the air around it. If the fire was big enough, it would actually be able to pull objects with it, and in the past there has been some occurrences of this, the firebombing of Dresden for one, and if the bomb is big enough, nuclear bombings may also cause “firestorms”
Latest Answers