
January 24, 2025, by Brigitte Nerlich
Whiplash, sponges and blizzards of embers: Exploring wildfire metaphors
Some years ago I wrote a blog post about climate change and language change, in which I talked about new weather words, such as weather bomb, atmospheric river, rain bomb, polar vortex, heat dome, Spanish plume, mega heat wave, mega drought and mega fire. Now, during the California wildfires of 2025, I have noticed a few new words emerging and some of them are, of course, metaphors that need examining.
Wildfires and metaphors
Lots of well-established metaphors are used about the wildfires sweeping (flying, jumping, running and even hopscotching) through the urban landscape of Los Angeles, ravaging and devouring whole neighbourhoods. Mega fires like the California ones are monster fires. We are used to these ubiquitous metaphors of fires as wild beasts, monsters and malevolent agents (that have to be fought or tamed) (studied by Teenie Matlock and others).
I want to leave these fire metaphors aside here. I also want to set aside the fire metaphors that describe the spread of misinformation, myths and lies. What interests me here are more scientific, explanatory metaphors.
Science and metaphors
Interestingly, some of these emerged in a paper that was published almost simultaneously with the start of the California wildfires. The fires broke on around the 7th of January, while the paper appeared in Nature on the 9th of January.
On the 10th of January, Daniel Swain, a climate scientist, extreme event communicator and lead author of the paper, started a long thread on Bluesky about the California fires and the new paper (he also did some YouTube explanations here and here).
He starts the thread by asking whether there is a link between climate change and the increasing risk/severity of wildfire in California. His reply is: “Yes. Is climate change the only factor at play? No, of course not. So what’s really going on?”
Reading the thread, the first metaphor that struck me was that of (atmospheric) ‘thirstiness’ which is linked, as I later discovered, to the metaphor of the (atmospheric) sponge and the quite widely repeated one of (atmospheric) whiplash. As Swain said in an interview with The Guardian “This increase in hydroclimate whiplash, via the exponentially expanding atmospheric sponge, offers a potentially compelling explanation” for the devastating impacts of climate change and the California fires.
Whiplash
Let’s start with whiplash or rather ‘hydroclimate whiplash’. It refers to dramatic shifts or swings between extreme wet and dry conditions accelerated globally by climate change. What does it entail?
As Swain explained in a livestream address quoted in many news reports: “This whiplash sequence in California has increased fire risk twofold: first, by greatly increasing the growth of flammable grass and brush in the months leading up to fire season, and then by drying it out to exceptionally high levels with the extreme dryness and warmth that followed.”
Sponge
And now we come to the sponge, a metaphor used to explain this growing phenomenon. We are talking about the atmosphere’s ability to drop and absorb water or to soak up and release moisture.
In the thread we started with, Swain talks about an “’Expanding Atmospheric Sponge’–which drives both more intense downpours & evaporative demand & thus contributes to increasing swings between wet & dry.” Referencing the Nature paper, he goes on to say: “This refers to the atmosphere’s enhanced capacity to absorb and release water, which grows by 7% with each degree Celsius of warming.”
The growth of the sponge is something to worry about. As Swain explains, using another metaphor: “The problem is that the sponge grows exponentially, like compound interest in a bank,” Swain explained. “The rate of expansion increases with each fraction of a degree of warming.”
Swain did not entirely invent the sponge metaphor. It has been used before, for example in the context of hurricanes and floods, where the sponge metaphor is used to explain that global warming doesn’t just make the world hotter and drier but also more flood prone.
An article from 2024 talks about the “sponge metaphor” quite explicitly: “This thinking — that the Earth’s atmospheric ‘sponge’ is constantly growing — can help explain why the overheating of our planet intensifies the amount of rain that falls during hurricanes, precipitation, and related events like floods and mudslides. The warmer the air, the bigger the sponge. The bigger the sponge, the more water it can hold. And the more water it holds, the more that gets released when weather events like hurricanes empty its contents.”
If you want to listen to an great explanation of the sponge effect, including ‘a comically oversized sponge’, listen to Swain during an interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson from about 22.40 minutes onwards.
Thirst and thirstiness
The sponge metaphor leads to yet another metaphor, that of atmospheric thirstiness and, like the sponge that can absorb and retain water but also suddenly release it, that thirstiness has two sides.
As Swain explains in the thread: “[With climate change] we see warming but also widespread increases in atmospheric ‘thirstiness’ (i.e., evaporative demand/vapor pressure deficit).” But, and this is important: “A warmer, thirstier atmosphere means (potentially) drier, more flammable vegetation in absence of compensating precip[itation] increases.”
Again, this metaphor is not entirely new. A 2022 article defines “atmospheric thirst” as “a measure of the potential loss of water from the earth’s surface to the atmosphere based on variables including temperature, humidity, wind speed, and solar radiation.”
Blow-dryer
So, we have some interesting explanatory metaphors here of the whiplash, the sponge, and thirstiness, which Swain all used in an interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson to the relation between climate change, wildfires and their impacts.
In addition, he used the metaphor of the blow-dryer wind or atmospheric blowdryer, one important component in the California conflagration that happened during the season of the so-called Santa Ana winds. Put these high winds together with the drier, more flammable vegetation, and voilà… you have what Swain calls a “blizzard of a billion embers”. This descriptive metaphor was used by many people across Los Angeles. I have collected a few examples randomly here. With more time and effort, one could do a proper analysis of the spread and range of that metaphor.
Blizzard of a billion embers
In another thread for Bluesky, Swain says: “Under the very most adverse vegetation and fire weather conditions, there is simply not much that can be done to stop a rapidly-advancing wall of flames or blizzard of a billion embers.”
This echoes people on Bluesky who compared the firestorm of embers to a blizzard or snowstorm or rain of hot embers. For example: “Embers were swirling and falling around him like snow in a big windy blizzard.” Or: “How do you defend against a blizzard of burning embers?” Or: “A bomb blizzard is the closest thing to compare it to from a weather perspective. But replace the snowflakes with embers. 70mph winds with endless waves of flying embers.” Or: “We’re watching the feeds and it’s terrifying. Current video is embers whipping across the road like a ground blizzard.”
There are also stories like this reported in the Los Angeles Times and elsewhere: “The Palisades fire started out as a small brush fire around 10:30 a.m. near Piedra Morada Drive, but the Santa Ana winds quickly drove the flames — and a blizzard of embers — through the dry brush onto the neighborhoods below.” (In more neutral speak, this is also called short- or long-range spotting)
Wildfire communication
As Teenie Matlock, Chelsea Coe and A. Leroy Westerling wrote in a 2017 article on monster wildfires: “Metaphor can emerge when there is a need to explain something complex or abstract, or when there is a need to create a particular feeling”. The whiplash, sponge and blow-dryer metaphors explain something complex and abstract, the blizzard of a billion ember one creates a particular feeling. Metaphors are important in climate and science communication and, as Matlock et al. pointed out: “Communication is an important part of wildfire suppression and safety.”
During the recent fires in Southern California, Daniel Swain has communicated relentlessly about the events and the science behind them and he skilfully employed metaphors that both explain and create feelings, a good combination if you want people to sit up, listen, think and act.
Over and above that Swain has also made clear how the phenomena highlighted in the metaphors are linked to climate change and what people can do to deal with the increasing risks posed by wildfires. This is quite exemplary in terms of climate and extreme weather communication.
Image: Pixabay: Sponge
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