Fire danger with dry weather and high winds in Texas

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Jon Porter warns of an extreme fire danger for western Texas and the southwestern Plains. Dry weather and wind gusts of 40-80 mph will create dangerous conditions for fires.

Transcript

00:00John let's get right to the upper air map here. I want to show you this as it lifts north and east

00:06I'm going to stop this in the early afternoon and look at all of that red showing you a lot of wind energy across the

00:13Texas Panhandle

00:14Tremendous wind energy that's dropping in here and notice all these lines in close proximity

00:19This showcases how strong the winds are going to be across the southern plains

00:24This can be a historic wind event and dust storm event here with a wildfire risk, too

00:30We've already had wind gusts Melissa was just showing over 80 miles per hour near Lubbock

00:34And you know it's one thing to have these kind of winds John

00:3760 to 70 80 miles per hour in the Texas Panhandle

00:41But we're extending the belt of strong winds all the way in the southeastern Kansas

00:46Right all the way up through Oklahoma including the Oklahoma City area southeast Kansas toward Kansas City

00:51Lots of power outages and travel issues across this entire area

00:55And this is a real concern here John two big concerns. You know what we've been doing this a long time whenever the wind blows this

01:03strong and this long

01:05Fires are unfortunately going to burn they are and they would normally but especially since it's been so dry in West, Texas

01:11That's going to amplify the fire risk any flame or spark can lead to a devastating

01:16Wildfire be on the lookout in these areas for any evacuation notices from local officials for fires this afternoon and widespread dust storms

01:25John big problems i-40 i-44 i-20 and i-10

01:30Visibility can be reduced to near zero at times in dust storms

01:34And we've already had major flight delays already coming in out of Dallas Fort Worth

01:40International

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