how come wildfire embers can travel miles and start new fires, whereas fire pits and bbqs can be 10’ from a house?
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When you have a small fire pit, when an ember lifts up, it will quickly cool down in the cooler air surrounding the fire – so by the time the ember had blown any distance from the fire it will have rapidly cooled down in the normal air to the point it is unlikely to catch things on fire.
When you have a forest fire however, the fire is huge, and is quickly heating up all of the surrounding air. So when an ember lifts up, it cannot drift out into the cooler air and cool down itself, because there is no cool air there – so it will stay heated by the volume of hot air coming off the fire. This means it will travel a lot further before it escapes the heat of the fire and starts to cool down to a safe temperature.
It is worth mentioning however that all fires have the potential to be very dangerous – the embers coming off a garden fire pit are still more than capable of starting fires nearby, as evidence by the amount of fires that are caused by people being careless with fire pits and campfires.
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