Smoke …visual

This is prompted by Douglas’s post on the odor of smoke.  I find the ability to visually identify smoke from a distance to be fascinating.  I was once driving 30 miles from home and saw a pillar of black smoke.  I commented to my wife that it looked like it could be our house. As I headed home, I saw nothing that changed my mind. It turned out to be a neighbor burning tires.  I find it fascinating that my estimate was so close.

The dirty smoke from burning tires could indeed look like a structural fire. Half of our homes are plastic these days.

Visually, though, I think a structural fire would be hotter giving it a stronger convection current -- the smoke column would be higher and more vertical before the prevailing wind pushed it sideways.

(BTW, who TF burns tires anymore?)

This goes back more than a few years.  Even so, tire burning was not an accepted practice back then, but that neighbor was pretty questionable,
.

When I was with the fire department, we knew we had a fighting chance if the smoke was grey and airy. The thick black smoke that 'pumps' out of a building lets you know that the structure itself is compromised. This can be incredibly valuable when an officer first rolls up because you don't want to put anyone in harms way lightly.

We have had many a surround-and-drown structure fires because the building was COOKING.

It wasn't often that we would get wildfire smoke in my area, but the last few years have had incidents where a slight haziness to the air kept making me think my glasses were smudged.

Wildfire [aka bushfire here] smoke:- wispy and greyish - grass;  heavier and taking on a brownish cast - the shrubs and low growing plants have caught;  dark grey and billowing - the eucalypts have entered the picture - time to get the go bag.  
We also get inblown ash - from considerable distances - dark stuff floating down from an otherwise blue sky.  Check the emergency services website and cross fingers.