The Whirlwind Named Kubor: How Wildfires Give Birth to Stratospheric Long-Livers
In late 2019, the sky over Australia turned red with smoke. The fires burned so intensely that the heat lifted air to the altitude where airplanes fly — into the stratosphere. There, tens of kilometers up, the smoke didn't just disperse. It swirled into a massive air vortex, like a giant funnel. Scientists named this vortex Kubor, after the sky spirit from Australian Aboriginal mythology.