A raging wildfire spreading across southern California has sparked its own destructive weather, including thunderstorms that brought a series of devastating lightning bolts, according to weather experts.

As the fire near the San Bernardino National Forest has rapidly grown in size over the weekend and forced thousands to flee their homes, the powerful blaze has created its own tiny weather system hampering efforts to control the inferno.

“The fire itself helped spawn its own thunderstorms,” meteorologist Dave Munyan, of the National Weather Service, told the New York Times.

“Most of the aviation-based fire tactics had to be suspended yesterday due to the lightning.”

The incredible natural phenomenon is called pyrocumulonimbus, which in simpler terms means a fire-generated storm.

The intense heat from the wildfire – which has reportedly burned more than 17,000 acres — rises into the air, and when combined with enough moisture can lead to thunderstorms, Munyan told the Times.

Officials said there were reports of more than 1,100 lighting strikes in the area from the smoke that has formed into thunderstorm clouds, CBS News reported.

The mini weather system can also result in gusty winds that could help spread the fire.

More than 11,000 people have been issued evacuation orders, the Times reported – as more than 35,000 homes and buildings are threatened by the fire.

The so-called Line Fire was originally reported in the area of Baseline Street and Aplin Street last Thursday, but with “critically dry” vegetation and temperatures reaching more than 100 degrees, the inferno quickly grew larger, according to Cal Fire.

More than 600 firefighters are battling the blaze, but so far none of it is contained. 

There are no reported fatalities, but three firefighters have been injured so far.

It’s not known what started the wildfire.

With Post wires

Esmeralda Marie Pineda was camping with three friends in the Northern California wilderness on Aug. 25 when she told them she wanted to go home to Sacramento. She was gone when they woke up the next morning, NBC News reports. “So, her friends went searching for her during that day, and couldn’t find any signs whether she had made it out,” said Sgt. Dustin Moe of the Nevada County Sheriff’s Office said. Deputies found the 24-year-old on Friday, “severely dehydrated and emaciated” and in need of immediate medical attention after 12 days in the wilderness. Pineda was airlifted to a hospital for treatment.

“She was able to pick her head up and kind of wave at us when we were driving in the area,” Moe said, per KCRA. “It’s just shocking what the human body can endure for that long period of time.” Pineda had last been seen near the middle fork of the Yuba River and Sweetland Creek, officials said. The area is “treacherous in nature and required skilled Nevada County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue volunteers to repel into and out of the canyon to look for her,” the statement added. Pineda was found at the top of the river canyon, indicating that she’d made a steep climb, sheriff’s officials said. There are no trail systems in that area, “so people just generally don’t go down there,” Moe said. (More search and rescue stories.)

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—A mother in California lost her daughter to the foster care system in 2016 after she wouldn’t support the then-14-year-old girl identifying as a boy. 

“I lost my husband, but this was worse than losing my husband, because I had my rights taken away,” the mother told The Daily Signal.

Years later, the daughter regrets attempting to transition, and her mother warns other parents against allowing minors to make irreversible changes to their bodies.

The mother of two, whose husband had died years earlier, was accused of emotional abuse for forbidding her teenage daughter from binding her chest and wearing male clothes. Her daughter was taken from the family and placed in a foster home for a few months.

“It was incredibly hard,” said the mom, who asked to remain anonymous to protect the privacy of her daughter. “I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.”

The Daily Signal reviewed Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services documentation in which a social worker, referring to the then-14-year-old with he/him pronouns and a male name, details the daughter’s time in foster care, her accusations of emotional abuse against her mother, and her later renunciation of the claims.

The mother had to hire lawyers to regain custody of her daughter and clear her name of the abuse charges. The charges would have disqualified her from continuing to pursue a career as a Christian counselor.

After a few months in a packed foster home in a dangerous neighborhood, the daughter asked to come home. She admitted to lying about the abuse, saying that she got the idea to accuse her mother of abuse from people online who said that was the ticket to getting away from her family.

“The process of getting her back, it was pretty difficult,” the mother said.

“She even admitted it to me later that she was influenced by people online who said you need to get out of your house if she’s not going to let you do what you want to do,” she continued.

The mother hired two attorneys to get her teenager back and clear her name. She said she felt like Child Protective Services was looking for reasons to tear her family apart.

“It was not about reunification,” she said. “It was more about, what can we do to this family to destroy them?”

After the daughter returned home, she called social workers on her mother a few more times, accusing her mom of abuse for refusing to buy her male clothing. The mother received a California Child Abuse Central Index (CACI) violation for declining to take her daughter to a program at the Los Angeles LGBT Center for LGBTQ+ youths ages 2-25 called Rise.

“I wasn’t feeling like that was really helping her, going to that center, because even when she was going to the center, I found that she was connecting with other kids, and her demeanor was even worse, even more rebellious, even more defiant,” the mother said. “I made the call. I’m not going to drive you there. And that’s when the social worker wanted to interview me, and because I didn’t do that, I immediately got a second hit for emotional abuse.”

“I just found it really crazy that they could deem that as emotionally abusive, just trying to discipline your child,” she continued.

At age 17, the daughter admitted to getting a prescription for testosterone from a therapist behind her mom’s back. She took it for a few days, but she told her mom she felt God was telling her to stop.

The mom said she couldn’t have gotten through the difficult time without her faith community. She left California a few years ago, partially because of how her parental rights were disrespected there.

“Once this was all resolved, I thought I had to get out of California, as much as it was home to me, and still is, to some point,” she said. “I didn’t feel safe there raising my daughter anymore.”

This is not the first time the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services has taken a daughter away from her mother over transgender ideology. DCFS placed 16-year-old Yaeli Martinez in foster care after her devout Christian mother, Abby, expressed concerns over her daughter “transitioning” to a boy.

The government accused Abby Martinez of abuse and permitted her only brief meetings with her daughter weekly. Yaeli committed suicide three years later.

“My daughter was murdered by gender ideology,” Martinez said in a testimony before the California Senate Judiciary Committee in 2023.

The anonymous mother told The Daily Signal that in states like California and Minnesota, to which the family has since moved, “a parent does not have the rights to parent their kid or guide them from things that could be potentially harming.”

“It’s very concerning because parents’ role is to guide their children the best they can in a healthy manner,” she said, “and giving a 14-year-old those rights, it doesn’t make sense to me.”

The mother referred to a May 2023 bill signed by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz—currently running as the Democratic vice presidential nominee—that allows kids to travel to Minnesota and receive medical interventions without parental knowledge or consent and to a 2013 California law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of “gender identity” in schools.

In mid-July, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed Assembly Bill 1955, which barred school districts from requiring that parents be informed of their child’s gender identity. 

The mother told The Daily Signal she was very concerned about the health risks of chest binding. She told her daughter it could permanently damage her body. Chest binding can cause tissue and rib damage, hormone imbalances, and breathing issues.

According to the mother, social media played a huge role in her daughter’s decision to identify as a boy.

“I think if there wasn’t social media, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” she said. “There’s just so many things that they can get into through social media and the internet.”

Although the road has not been easy, the mom and daughter—now 22 years old—have a good relationship now.

“She regrets it, what she put me through,” the mother said. “She’s sorry that she did.”

Now, the mother urges other parents in similar situations to limit their children’s phone usage, find support systems, and never give up on their families.

“Just keep fighting,” she said. “That’s what I did. I just kept fighting.”