The paper first reviews the mode of generation of fire whirls, their properties, and operational regimes, under well-controlled experimental conditions. The situation is different with wildfires. These are uncontrolled and less well understood. A modified analytical approach is described for these conditions. This is based on global energy levels, per unit ground area, for different fuels, and their associated rates of fire spread, under different conditions. These enable regimes of possible fire whirl generation in wildfires to be defined. The associated accuracy is not that of a laboratory flame, but it is probably practically sufficient. Only in two instances were atmospheric fires experimentally controlled. In the remainder, the rate of fire spread was a more meaningful parameter than a burning velocity, and the critical lateral velocity was seldom known accurately. Nevertheless, it was possible to relate it to the heat release rate, with both in dimensionless form.

该论文首先回顾了在良好控制的实验条件下，火旋风的产生方式、特性和运行机制。野火的情况则不同。这些都是不受控制的，也不太了解。针对这些条件描述了一种改进的分析方法。这是基于不同燃料的全球能量水平，单位地面面积，以及它们在不同条件下的相关火势蔓延速度。这些可以定义野火中可能产生的火旋风的机制。相关的准确度不是实验室火焰的准确度，但实际上可能已经足够了。只有在两种情况下，大气火灾是通过实验控制的。在其余部分中，火势蔓延速度是比燃烧速度更有意义的参数，并且很少准确地知道临界横向速度。然而，有可能将其与热释放率联系起来，两者都以无量纲形式存在。