Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Critical Fire Weather - Feb 14 & 15 - So Great Plains, TX & OK

I recently wrote about the extreme drought that is continuing in portions of the Southern Great Plains, including portions of Oklahoma and Texas, see my February 12th article for more information. Following up on that article on the extreme drought I went to the National Weather Service's Fire Weather page from their Storm Prediction Center (SPC) to get the fire weather outlooks issued today, February 14th.

To get the Google Earth images that I share with you below, I went to the SPC's shapefile/KML links, looking for kml files that work with Google Earth, about half way down the page I looked for "Fire Weather Outlooks (Day 1,2 and 3-8) bundle" to download and install the kml file on Google Earth. I then go into Google Earth and select only the day that I want to share with you.

In the images below, note that there is elevated fire danger on both day 1 (February 14th) and day 2 (February 15th).

Fire Weather Outlook for February 14, 2018 issued by the NWS Storm Prediction Center  on February 14th

Fire Weather Outlook for February 15, 2018 issued by the NWS Storm Prediction Center  on February 14th
Since I have been following fire weather in the National Weather Service WFO at Amarillo Texas and the National Weather Service WFO at Norman Oklahoma forecast areas, I went to the webpage of each Weather Forecast Office (WFO) to get the following images for you. Both WFOs are forecasting critical fire weather conditions for today. The Weather Forecast Office at Norman Oklahoma carries their fire weather forecast out for six days. Over the next couple of days I will do my best to try to be informed about wildfires that may breakout and report back in a day or two. In the meantime, if you want to see what is going on before I get back to you, please check out the Texas A&M Forest Service Current Situation page and the Oklahoma Forest Service Wildfire Information Page. The Oklahoma Fire News Blog with listings for earlier reports is another good source of information.

obtained on February 14, 2018 from https://www.weather.gov/ama/fireweather

Obtained on February 14, 2018 from the fire weather potential tab on https://www.weather.gov/oun/





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