Eli5: Why when you blow a little “wind” on a candle it will blow out? But very strong winds are known to increase the size of wildfires and make them spread more easily?

Question

You would think the more wind the faster the fire gets extinguished, I have a feeling the size of the fire matters but i just wonder why and where the line is drawn between a candle and a wildfire in extinguishing it when blowing wind on it goes from a very effective to a super ineffective technique.

In: 0

Answer 1

Other comments get this right, but I wanted to add that fire needs three things, heat, oxygen, fuel. Remove just one of those things enough and the fire goes out. In this case, as other users have pointed out, wind removes the heat for small fires, but is unable to do so quickly enough in large fires.