New Mexico Fire-Devils

Greetings:

Last week, around Wednesday, there was a large grass fire west of Portales,
New Mexico, USA. The wind was around 45 knots and it was warm.

Albuquerque television station KOB aired some video tape of the fire that I
found astounding. They showed two, what I would call, fire-devils. The
fire-devils were moving at near the speed of the wind and were rotating
rapidly and in fact looked just like dust-devils made of fire. I did not
record the early footage but was able to get some later that did not show as
much of the incident.

In my first capture

http://n5lp.net/Floyd1.JPG

the first fire-devil has just hit the highway, where it stalled a bit. This
one was shorter and broader than the following one.

http://n5lp.net/Floyd2.JPG

Both of them crossed the highway. It looked like it would have been pretty
interesting from the viewpoint of one of the cars.

These two picture frames are on the order of one second apart in real time.

I have never heard of this phenomenon before. Is there another term for it?

Larry Pardue 2I