Why NASA flew a repurposed Cold War spy plane over B.C.’s wildfires

Scientists studying fire-generated pyrocumulonimbus clouds capable of creating their own weather systems

A white aircraft flies over a mountain range. — NASA operates two Airborne Science ER-2 aircraft for a wide variety of environmental science, atmospheric sampling, and satellite data verification missions. (Carla Thomas/NASA)

A high-altitude research aircraft from NASA flew over British Columbia’s wildfires over the weekend in a bid to better understand weather events generated by large blazes.

Online aviation tracking shows the ER-2 plane flew back and forth over B.C.’s southern Interior more than a dozen times on Saturday on a flight of more than six hours that took off from Great Falls, Mont.

Data from the Flightradar24 website shows the plane spent about four hours at an altitude of 60,000 feet over the Clinton area, where the massive Pear Lake wildfire has been burning.

It also swung east over Lake Revelstoke before returning to U.S. airspace.

How wildfires create their own weather

NASA says on its website that the ER-2 is researching pyrocumulonimbus clouds, which it describes as “one of the least understood forms of severe weather on Earth.”

The B.C. Wildfire Service says the Pear Lake wildfire, the largest in B.C. at almost 1,500 square kilometres, has created such clouds that are formed by extreme smoke and heat and can in turn generate rain, lightning and fire tornadoes.

The ER-2 is a repurposed Cold War spy plane known as the U-2, that has set records for extreme altitude flights up to twice as high as the typical altitude of commercial flights.

A flight path map showing an aircraft departing from Montana and doing many loops in the B.C. Interior. — The flight path of NASA’s ER-2 Earth Resources aircraft flight over British Columbia on Saturday, Aug. 8, as tracked by Flightradar24. (The Canadian Press/Flightradar24)

NASA says the aircraft is fitted with “state-of-the-art infrared wildfire trackers” to register data on pyrocumulonimbus clouds.

“Smoky and crackling with lightning, these unique storms can create blind spots for aviators above and spark new blazes below,” NASA says in a news release.

“Measuring and mapping the dangerous storms as they develop in real-time will help scientists forecast them in the future.” — The Canadian Press

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Credit belongs to: www.cbc.ca