- Wildfires are spreading across the Texas Panhandle, threatening towns, forcing evacuations and cutting off power to thousands of homes and businesses.
- A fire at Smokehouse Creek, north of Amarillo, has burned through 500,000 acres and is zero percent contained. It has quickly become the second-largest wildfire in Texas history.
- Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has issued a disaster declaration for 60 counties and urged Texans "to limit activities that could create sparks and take precautions to keep their loved ones safe."
- Strong winds, unseasonably high temperatures and dry grass are fueling the fires, although rain could arrive tomorrow.
Wildfires have left 10,301 customers in the dark as of this morning, according to the energy-tracking website PowerOutage.us. Earlier, the number of homes and businesses without power was 4,254.
A majority of the outages — almost 4,000 — are in Hutchinson County.
The Smokehouse Creek Fire is now the second-largest wildfire in state history, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service, which said the fire has grown to an estimated 500,000 acres.
Thirty of the largest wildfires occurred in the state between 1988 and 2022, with the largest being the East Amarillo Complex at 907,245 acres in 2006.
The Big Country Fire in 1988, now the third largest, burned 366,000 acres, followed by Perryton in 2017 at 318,156 acres, and Rockhouse Fire at 314,444 acres.
The Smokehouse Creek Fire in Hutchinson County has grown to an estimated 500,000 acres and is zero percent contained, the Texas A&M Forest Service said in a post on X.
The service said that the fire's "behavior has moderated with decreased winds" but warned that it is still actively burning.
The city of Amarillo and its two local counties, Randall and Potter, declared a local state of disaster overnight, the city's office of emergency management said in a post on Facebook late last night.
The message stressed that the only area being evacuated was the Mesilla Park neighborhood. "The state of disaster simply notifies the state that our region requires assistance and/or additional resources for areas impacted," it added.
Wildfires are raging in the South with conditions so bad in Texas that a nuclear weapons plant was partially evacuated. Meanwhile, flights at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport were grounded and passengers were forced to shelter in place after tornado reports. NBC’s Adrienne Broaddus reports and the "TODAY" show’s Al Roker tracks the latest forecast.
The Pantex nuclear weapons site in Amarillo said it would reopen today after it closed and evacuated its staff last night.
On Facebook, the plant said that its staff should turn up for shifts as normal and confirmed that there was no fire within the plant site. There is an uncontained fire north of the facility, the update said.
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