Firefighters battling the largest wildfire in Texas history face increasingly difficult weather conditions on Saturday.
The Smokehouse Creek Fire that began Monday has killed at least two people, left a charred landscape of scorched prairie, dead cattle and destroyed as many as 500 structures, including burned-out homes, in the Texas Panhandle.
The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for the entire Panhandle from late Saturday morning through midnight Sunday after rain and snow on Thursday allowed firefighters to contain a portion of the fire.
Signs warning travelers of the critical fire danger are in place along Interstate 40 leading into Amarillo.
Get top local stories in DFW delivered to you every morning. >Sign up for NBC DFW's News Headlines newsletter.
Winds gusts of up to 45 miles per hour are expected Saturday with humidity below 10% and a high temperature of 75 degrees F.
“New fires could also potentially start ... the relative humidities are very low, the wind gusts are high and so it doesn't take much, all there needs to be is a spark” to ignite another fire, said meteorologist William Churchill with the National Weather Prediction Center.
Texas Wildfire
The fire, which has merged with another fire and crossed the state line into western Oklahoma, has burned more than 1,700 square miles and was 15% contained, the Texas A&M Forest Service said Friday.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation, although strong winds, dry grass and unseasonably warm weather fed the flames.
“Everybody needs to understand that we face enormous potential fire dangers as we head into this weekend,” Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said Friday after touring the area. “No one can let down their guard. Everyone must remain very vigilant.”
Two women were confirmed killed by the fires this week. But with flames still menacing a wide area, authorities haven’t yet thoroughly searched for victims or tallied homes and other structures damaged or destroyed.
Two firefighters were injured battling the flames in Oklahoma. One suffered a heat-related injury and the other was injured when the brush pumper he was riding in struck a tanker truck as the two were heading to fight the fire near Gage.
Both firefighters are expected to recover.
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller said individual ranchers could suffer devastating losses due to the fires, but predicted the overall impact on the Texas cattle industry and consumer beef prices would be minimal.
The number of dead cattle was not known, but Miller and local ranchers estimate the total will be in the thousands.
TEXAS WILDFIRES
___
Vertuno reported from Austin, Texas. Associated Press journalists Ty O’Neil in Stinnett, Texas, Jamie Stengle in Dallas, and Ken Miller in Oklahoma City contributed.
2011 TEXAS WILDFIRES
In April 2011, during an extreme drought, four out-of-control wildfires burning in close proximity to each other were dubbed The Possum Kingdom Complex Fire. The fires scorched 126,000 acres of parched Texas ranch land and destroyed 168 homes and two churches.
Senior Meteorologist David Finfrock said in the NBC 5 docu-series Inside the Storm: Texas Burning, that at that time the period from August 2010 to July 2011 was the driest 12 consecutive months on record.
Later that summer, in August, a second fire erupted near the lake called the PK 101 Ranch fire. That fire burned more than 6,000 additional acres on the south side of the lake and destroyed nearly 40 more homes.
On Sept. 4, 2011, a massive wildfire erupted in Central Texas. The Bastrop County Complex Fire, east of Austin, became the most destructive wildfire in Texas history. More than 1,600 homes and structures were destroyed when 32,000 acres were scorched, including 96% of the 6,565-acre Bastrop State Park. Two people died in the fires.
During that 2011 fire season, the Texas A&M Forest Service said more than 31,000 fires burned more than four million acres across the state and destroyed 2,947 homes.
