Scorching temperatures, dry weather and windy conditions have thrust Texas into Level 4 fire preparedness, the second-highest alert issued by climatologists at the Texas A&M Forest Service.
across the state, ranging in size from a few dozen acres to several hundred. They include the 1,400-acre Double Back fire in Johnson County, which was 90% contained; the 900-acre Craft fire in Jack County, which was 70% contained; and the 400-acre Cedar Top fire in Knox County, which was only 15% contained.as above-normal temperatures continue to blanket most of the state, including in Harris, Dallas, Travis, Tarrant, El Paso, Hays and Williamson counties.
Adam Turner, a wildland urban interface coordinator with the Texas A & M Forest Service, said flash droughts sweeping across some parts of the state will keep fire-danger levels high through the week. A flash drought is the sudden onset or worsening of a drought. “We are experiencing … what we are calling a flash drought across all of north and then Central Texas, so almost straight down the 1-35 corridor,” he told Houston Public Media. “This intense high pressure that we’ve had for the past month has really just critically dried all of our fuel. So, our grass, our trees, our brush is all very dry.”
More than 85% of the state is currently under drought conditions ranging from “abnormally dry” to “exceptional drought” according to the . That’s an increase from last week’s 79%, but still well below this time last year, when only 1% of the state wasn’t in a drought.“The heat that we keep breaking records with is really drying out our vegetation very quickly,” Kari Hines, a program coordinator at the Texas A&M Forest Service, told The Texas Standard. “This week, we know we’re going to have sustained winds in some places of over 20 miles per hour, gusts of even higher.
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