Forest fires burn out of control; the brush is dry and only one spark is needed to create the next fire that can break out of control.
No home or neighborhood is safe from this reality in Amarillo.
Extreme temperatures are another factor. The record, three-digit heat only makes things worse.
Summer heat in May
It is assumed that the temperatures in Amarillo at this time of year are at a comfortable 78 degrees.
Since Friday, however, they have risen to triple figures – even setting records.
On Friday, the city hit 90 degrees.
“It was the first time we did this in May,” said Alex Ferguson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service (NWS) in Amarillo.
But from there it only got worse. The next day, May 7, Amarillo hit 101 degrees, setting more records. “That beat a record (high daytime temperature) of 1916. The previous record for May 7 was 97,” Ferguson said. “It was also the earliest 100-degree day here in Amarillo.”
The Austin / San Antonio Weather Service is also monitoring records. Their region has tripled figures since Friday, making it the earliest they have ever seen 100-degree consecutive days. San Antonio reached a three-digit number on Saturday and Sunday and can do it again today.
It may seem like a bunch of numbers to some, but to the people of Amarillo it means a lot more.
“You know, it’s just not good. It’s not good here,” Ferguson said. “Both for fire danger and for agricultural problems.”
The heat only contributed to a number of problems. The region is in a severe drought.
All of Texas Panhandle is currently in the top two categories of drought, which goes hand in hand with their forest fire problems.
“You know the chances are that a grass fire will spread through the open here. But they could threaten cities,” Ferguson said. “I know we had the town of Skelletown, which was in danger of fire earlier this year.”
The fire burned nearly 24,000 acres and destroyed several homes.
In the last few weeks alone, cities have been evacuated due to the danger of fire in the area.
And as we have seen again and again, these fires can move so fast, burn fiercely, and people have very few warnings.
The Hermits Peak / Calf Canyon fire in New Mexico threatened 15,000 homes last week, requiring evacuations. It became the second largest wildfire in New Mexico in history.
With very low humidity levels in the last few weeks in the southwest, lack of rainfall and winds of up to 50 miles per hour, fires are raging.
Three new major fires were reported over the weekend, two in Arizona and one in Texas.
Currently, 12 wildfires have burned 322,309 acres in four states, according to the National Interdepartmental Fire Center.
Dangerous heat will only make the brush drier and more prone to fires.
The Climate Forecasting Center recently published its summer climate forecast, and it doesn’t bring good news for much of the southwest – or the whole country.
The center’s forecast indicates that we are likely to see above normal temperatures for the southwest during the summer months, as well as below normal rainfall for these areas, including Amarillo.
Places like New Mexico could see some relief from the monsoon rains, but that probably won’t help in the long run, according to CPU meteorologist Brad Pu.
“Later in the summer, July and August, if heavy monsoon rains occur, this could provide at least temporary relief from the drought in Arizona and New Mexico,” Pew said. “Unfortunately, the summer months are usually dry for California and the Great Basin, so we would expect drought conditions to continue for these areas during the summer.
One factor contributing to climate prospects is the fact that we are still in La Niña.
La Niña is a phenomenon that causes warmer than normal temperatures in parts of the West and rainfall below normal.
This could also lead to a more active hurricane season in the Atlantic.
Hurricane season may start earlier
Sounds like the last thing you want to hear if you live on the coast.
It seemed that six months of monitoring meteorological data, looking at spaghetti patterns and pursuing the National Hurricane Center’s website were not enough.
I know. I lived it for most of my life. To put it mildly, it is stressful.
But the truth of the matter is that hurricane season is beginning to fail to recognize the boundaries we have set as “season.”
“Named storms occurred before the official start of the hurricane season in about half of the last 10-15 years, including each of the last seven years (2015-2021),” said Denis Feltgen, meteorologist and public relations officer at NHC.
We are now just a few weeks away from the official start of the hurricane season – which starts on June 1 and the opportunity remains this season to develop just before June 1.
In fact, on Sunday, the NHC’s tropical analysis and forecasting department highlighted “the first tropical wave of the season” coming off the coast of Africa. And there was an interesting little twist in the forecast models along the southeast coast, which caught the attention of some of my colleagues over the weekend.
This shows me that things are already starting to come to life in the tropics, even if nothing seems definite at the moment.
So the question arises whether the beginning of the hurricane season should change?
“In 2021, the National Meteorological Service has assembled a team to set quantitative thresholds for adding or removing dates from the official Atlantic hurricane season, along with a study of the potential consequences of moving the hurricane season to May 15,” he said. Feltgen.
There will be no changes to the hurricane season dates for this season at this time, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen sometime in the future.
Although we continue to see storms developing outside of our typical season, most of them turned out to be quite shorter and weaker systems.
“Many of the systems in May are short-lived, hybrid (subtropical) systems that are now being identified for better monitoring, as well as policy changes that we now call subtropical storms,” Feltgen said.
Last year, the NHC began publishing its tropical weather forecasts in mid-May to take into account possible pre-season storms.
The projections highlight all areas that the NHC is monitoring for potential development. So this Sunday (May 15) the NHC will start releasing them four times a day.
Also, the NOAA Climate Forecasting Center will present its forecast for the upcoming hurricane season on May 24.
It will include the number of storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes expected throughout the six-month season.
Read what experts from the State University of Colorado predict, this will be the season of hurricanes. He broke records last year. Read the summary here.
CNN meteorologists Hailey Brink and Judson Jones contributed to this article.
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