California's Deadly Carr Fire Was So Large, It Created Its Own Weather, a Giant Fire Whirl (PHOTOS)

More than 35,000 residents have been displaced as the fire has burned through 196 square miles, an area larger than Colorado Springs.

(MORE: The Latest on California's Wildfires)

The Carr Fire is the largest of at least 17 major infernos that have burned throughout California in recent weeks, NPR reported.

The fire was so large and so hot last Friday it created its own weather, in the form of a giant, damaging fire whirl.

"The most intense wildfires can create fire whirls near their edge, basically like a dust devil, but of intensely-heated, rising air consolidating rotation like a spinning skater bringing in its arms," weather.com senior digital meteorologist Jonathan Erdman explained.

While fire whirls can have strong enough winds to uproot trees, Erdman explained that in the Carr Fire's case, the fire whirl grew so large and tall (estimated up to 18,000 feet), and its winds were so strong that it resembled an actual tornado, ripping roofs off homes, crumpling a transmission tower and leaving the ground scoured of even burned vegetation, in spots.

It prompted the National Weather Service office in Sacramento to issue a special weather statement warnings of local winds up to 50 mph due to the mammoth-sized fire whirl. 

"It's not known whether the transmission tower was crumpled largely from winds or from the intense heat. It's probably some combination of both," Erdman said.

"Some wildfires burn hot enough to create a thunderstorm, with lightning, even hail, called a pyrocumulonimbus cloud," Erdman said. "It's the same mechanism that creates an ordinary thunderstorm, only the superheated air drives the cloud's updraft, and moisture from burning vegetation, in addition to water vapor from the surrounding air, condenses on smoke particles."

One such wildfire-generated thunderstorm dumped quarter-size hail in the Texas Panhandle in mid-May 2018.

(MORE: Six of California's Most Destructive Wildfires Have Struck in the Last 10 Months)

By Wednesday, the Carr Fire was 35 percent contained, though the blaze still threatens some 1,650 structures.

The fire claimed the lives of two firefighters and four civilians, including a 70-year-old great-grandmother and two of her great-grandsons, ages 4 and 5. 

"I was talking to my grandson on the phone, he was saying, 'Grandpa, please, you gotta come and help us. The fire's at the back door,'" Ed Bledsoe, husband of the deceased woman and great-grandfather of the two young boys, told CBS News. "I said, 'I'm close by, son, I'm trying to get in there.' I said, 'I'm right by you.'"

Bledsoe said his wife wrapped the boys in wet blankets as he tried to make it back to the home in hopes of saving them.

About 10,000 people were allowed to return to their homes on Monday as some evacuations were lifted, the AP reported. Still, about 27,000 people remain affected by mandatory evacuations.