Fire whirls are not usually classifiable as tornadoes as the vortex in most cases does not extend from the surface to cloud base.

Also, even in such cases, those fire whirls very rarely are classic tornadoes, as their vorticity derives from surface winds and heat-induced lifting, rather than from a tornadic mesocyclone aloft.

[2] Fire whirls become frequent when a wildfire, or especially firestorm, creates its own wind, which can spawn large vortices.

[6] These can also aid the 'spotting' ability of wildfires to propagate and start new fires as they lift burning materials such as tree bark.

[7][8] These range from small to large and form from a variety of mechanisms, including those akin to typical fire whirl processes, but can result in Cumulonimbus flammagenitus (cloud) spawning landspouts and waterspouts[9] or even to develop mesocyclone-like updraft rotation of the plume itself and/or of the cumulonimbi, which can spawn tornadoes similar to those in supercells.

[19][20][21] An extreme example of the phenomenon occurred in the aftermath of the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake in Japan, in which a city-wide firestorm in Tokyo produced the conditions required for a gigantic fire whirl that killed 38,000 people in fifteen minutes in the Hifukusho-Ato region of the city.

[23] Fire whirls were produced in the conflagrations and firestorms triggered by firebombings of European and Japanese cities during World War II and by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[24] Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, particularly in 1978–1979, fire whirls ranging from the transient and very small to intense, long-lived tornado-like vortices capable of causing significant damage were spawned by fires generated from the 1000 MW Météotron, a series of large oil wells located in the Lannemezan plain of France used for testing atmospheric motions and thermodynamics.

Blue whirls are partially premixed flames that reside elevated in the recirculation region of the vortex-breakdown bubble.