Dr. Reed Timmer, Extreme Meteorologist, recaps some of the key points of the wildfire and discusses an outlook on what to potentially expect next.
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00:00 An elevated wildfire threat continues today across the southern high plains as
00:04 winds are continuing to be relatively gusty and relative humidities are down
00:08 around 10 to 15 percent and there's also some very dry fuels that remain out
00:13 there and the wildfire threats going to continue through today and then a cold
00:17 frontal passage is going to slide through and that will eventually
00:19 mitigate the wildfire threat through the rest of the week but so far today
00:24 firefighters are starting to do back burning to the south of some of these
00:27 burn scars to try to prevent that southward spread that happens so rapidly
00:31 with a cold front passage some of that back burning is happening near Catesby
00:35 Oklahoma on the Catesby fire burn scar and around the southern periphery of the
00:39 old Smokehouse Creek fire burn scar as well that one burned to over 1 million
00:44 acres becoming the largest wildfire in Texas state history and that one even
00:49 surpassed in some of those big mega fires from Colorado like the troublesome
00:53 East troublesome fire and the Cameron Peak fire from a couple of years ago
00:56 many of those mountain fires out in California as well are much smaller than
01:00 the million acres burnt by this very fast-moving wildfire in the Texas
01:04 Panhandle a grass fire driven by 40 to 60 mile-per-hour winds here in central
01:09 Oklahoma the front has pushed off to the east and we have dry conditions back
01:12 behind it so the wildfire threat grass fires the potential for those is going
01:17 to remain elevated through the afternoon as well so certainly from a fire
01:22 weather standpoint this is likely the last day at least with this round with
01:26 this trough where it's going to remain elevated in the southern high plains
01:29 but I do think that when the next system comes through those windy conditions are
01:33 going to bring a resumed threat of fires to the area