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Wildfires
in the Panhandles |
On Thursday March 30, a fire
broke out in northeast Amarillo. Although there was no word of
injuries, preliminary estimates of 400 to 700 acres were burned
with more than 10 homes destroyed. Strong westerly winds of 30
to 40 mph behind a dryline combined with very low relative humidity
values to produce very dangerous fire conditions. The peak wind
gust at Rick Husband International Airport was recorded at 54
mph. A few pictures were taken from the National Weather Service
office located a few miles to the east of the fires. To view these
pictures, click on the thumbnails below.
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On Sunday March, 12th two large
wild fires ignited and spread northeast to east across the east
central Texas Panhandle. To date, nearly 1,000,000 acres of land
have been burned included a number of buildings and houses. This
fire has been declared the largest fire in Texas history. Unfortunately,
there were more than 10 deaths related to these fires. Below are
a few satellite images taken on Sunday while the fires were raging.
Journeyman Forecaster Jason Jordan drove out to the fires to offer
additional meteorological help to firefighters and decision makers
on Sunday afternoon. He was able to take a few photos of the fire
and burn scars. You can view his images by clicking on the link
below. Please note, these images were compiled into a slide show
using Flash so you will need Flash to view the show. Also, the
file size is rather large (almost 3 mb) so it may take a minute
or two to download. The Slideshow is interactive and you will
have the ability to Play, Stop, Rewind (one frame) or move Forward
(one frame) during the show.
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| Flash
Slideshow of the March 12, 2006 Fires (3mb) |
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This is a screen capture
of an enhanced satellite image of the wildfires burning in the Texas
Panhandle. The fires are the bright purple images mainly in Gray
and Roberts counties. A rough estimate of the lenght of the fires
appears to be between 30 and 40 miles. This image was taken at about
6:00 pm CST on Sunday the 12th of March.
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You may
also notice a few other smaller fires burning across the area. There
is one small fire
north of Beaver county in Kansas, there is a small fire in North
East New Mexico, one fire
burning in Childress county, and another small fire in South East
New Mexico near the bottom
of the image. As of 6:00pm CST, the two large fire in the Texas
Panhandle were still out of
control, although fire fighters were working extremely hard to battle
the blazes. |
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This is another enhanced satellite
image of the fires burning in the Texas Panhandle. The fires are
shown here as dark black spots. This image was take at 6:30 pm CST.
The white streaks are clouds moving into the panhandles from the
south west and are not associated with the fires.
Between 5:30 pm and 6:30 pm the surface winds shifted from the
southwest to a more westerly direction (blowing from the west to
the east). This caused the fires to start moving more to the east
and now endager the town of Miami. |
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This image shows the progression of
the fires as of 9:30 pm CST. Notice the fires are still creeping
to the east due to the strong west winds. Officials noted that the
fire in Roberts county had burned 211,000 acres by 9:30 pm. There
have been no reports to the size of the fire in Gray and Wheeler
counties, but you may notice that the fire sizes are very similar
based on these satellite images.
You may notice another slightly smaller fire in southern Childress
county. No information is known for this fire at this time. |
For all evacuation notices, stay tuned to NOAA Weather Radio or go to
the Fire Weather Page and click
on Fire
Warnings for the Texas Panhandle for the latest warnings.
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www.weather.gov 
National Weather Service Forecast Office
