wildfires in the Texas panhandle and Oklahoma tonight
alt text
Satellite imagery of heat signatures from wildfires stretched across about half of the upper Texas panhandle
One of them, the Smokehouse Creek Fire, has become the 5th largest fire in TX state history since starting yesterday, at about ~250k acres burned!
UPDATE: 500k this morning for that fire alone, and now the 2nd largest in state history
UPDATE update: over 1.2 million acres total for all fires combined look to have burned, with many fires still at 0% containment. However there is some promising rain/snow headed their way.
Parts of Texas set heat records yesterday with central Texas reaching 100 F (37.7 C). In FEBRUARY. What's frightening about it is how fast it blew up: a cold front with very high wind speeds moved through the area and turned the wind direction 90 degrees from W-E to N-S, essentially creating a front 60 miles wide in spots, which you can watch as it happens via satellite: https://twitter.com/TimLong3... smoke: https://twitter.com/BenJurko....
Just some super scary extreme fire behavior with that wind shift, it's incredible that there's been no word of anybody getting burned over: https://twitter.com/CIRA_CSU...
Multiple, entire towns have been evacuated, some with no warning.
Don't have anything yet on the fires in Australia right now but going to give Victoria a run for their money, I guess. :(
source: https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES...
#climatechangeisnow
UPDATE: 500k this morning for that fire alone, and now the 2nd largest in state history
UPDATE update: over 1.2 million acres total for all fires combined look to have burned, with many fires still at 0% containment. However there is some promising rain/snow headed their way.
Parts of Texas set heat records yesterday with central Texas reaching 100 F (37.7 C). In FEBRUARY. What's frightening about it is how fast it blew up: a cold front with very high wind speeds moved through the area and turned the wind direction 90 degrees from W-E to N-S, essentially creating a front 60 miles wide in spots, which you can watch as it happens via satellite: https://twitter.com/TimLong3... smoke: https://twitter.com/BenJurko....
Just some super scary extreme fire behavior with that wind shift, it's incredible that there's been no word of anybody getting burned over: https://twitter.com/CIRA_CSU...
Multiple, entire towns have been evacuated, some with no warning.
Don't have anything yet on the fires in Australia right now but going to give Victoria a run for their money, I guess. :(
source: https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES...
#climatechangeisnow
:(