The crash kicked up a lot of snow into the air, making me wonder if that helped suppress the fireball, as it seemed to die down very quickly. On thing leading to me think this might have happened is video from the recent firefighting in California, where the spray from the firefighting aircraft seemed to snuff out the flames as soon as it descended into them, before it reached the ground.
A fire can be extinguished with diesel (jet fuel is pretty much just cleaner diesel / kerosene) in cold conditions, I know because I’ve done it.
It takes a fair amount of heat / pressure to ignite jet fuel, easier if it’s vaporised.
Why were you trying to extinguish a fire using diesel?
I would guess they were not trying to extinguish a fire with diesel and accidentally learned you could.
Indeed. It was about 0 degree Celsius, camping and we were trying to get a bit of a fire going for heat. I won't do that with petrol as I value my eyebrows, ended up having to thin the diesel a bit with petrol as we discovered splashing diesel on a small flame on damp wood doesn't help at all.