Wildfire Danger Critical in Oklahoma, Texas

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Bulldozers and airplanes have been put on alert as Texas faces an increased threat for wildfires. In Oklahoma, that state has experienced the driest four month stretch the Dust Bowl and thousands of acres have burned in the past month alone.

The Texas Forest Service says hot weather, extremely dry vegetation and widespread drought are combining to create dangerous fire conditions through April 10. The agency says the threat is high for wildfires west of Interstate 35, including the Western and Southern Plains, the Trans Pecos and the Hill Country.

Agency firefighters this year have battled more than 600 blazes burning 70,000 acres. That compares to less than 150 fires blackening about 5,200 acres a year ago.

Crews on April 4 contained a 27-acre wildfire in a small border town near Laredo, but not before it destroyed four homes and damaged several others. No injuries were reported in the fire in El Cenizo.

Oklahoma was drier in the four months following Thanksgiving than it has been in any similar period since 1921.

Neighboring states are in similar shape as the drought stretches from the Louisiana Gulf coast to Colorado, and conditions are getting worse, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

The area in Texas covered by an extreme drought has tripled in the past month to 40 percent, and in Oklahoma it nearly doubled in one week to 16 percent, according to the monitor’s March 29 update.

An extreme drought is declared when there’s major damage to crops or pasture and widespread water shortages or restrictions.

While dozens of people in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas have lost homes to the hundreds of grassfires that have torn through the parched landscape in the past month, Oklahoma officials said more fires caused more damage as recently as 2009. This year, the biggest losses are likely to come from the drought’s effect on the wheat farmers planted last fall and hoped to harvest in June, they said.

Almost all of Oklahoma is covered in some degree of drought. Only the far northeastern corner has escaped, thanks to a few big winter snowstorms.