Shelden Breshears checks in on storm, fire conditions

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:56][music] >> All right. Well, hey, good Thursday afternoon kind of getting into the evening period here everyone. It's been a busy afternoon as we've had a string of severe thunderstorm warnings and unfortunately, thanks to some dry air it's taken over and caused a lot of fires around the region as well. So, of course, News Channel 10 is still going to be your best resource for information. We have some updated information. I know our news crews are gathering some new info as well. We'll continue to relay that to, but I wanted to hop on here real quick just kind of let you know what was going on around the region, what we're seeing out there.

[00:02:54]We'll be diving into radar, what's going on outside here as we're wrapping up our Thursday, where storms are at, and of course, the latest on those fire warnings, which are in effect here for the next 40 minutes or so. So, let's go ahead and jump right in. Take a look at those fire warnings right now, where the main one, the primary one we've really been focusing on here as we've gone throughout this evening is this fire warning down in Randall County. Now, this one is prompting evacuations. The latest information that we have from the Texas A&M Forest Service is about 1,000 acres that this is burning so far. Uh right now they're saying that in the areas of Hungate Road and FM 1714 and Arnot Road and FM 1705, those areas are being evacuated as well as Chaparral Villas. That's near Brown Road and Cemetery Road that they have been evacuated. And right now they're recommending that residents uh right around Canyon Junior High west of Highway 87 they're encouraged to prepare for possible evacuation. So, just to give you guys a bit of a refresher at least on these fire warnings. So, what these are, these are technically issued by the National Weather Service office here in Amarillo or their respective area, but they are issued at the request of local emergency management officials.

[00:03:59]So, that means that Randall County, Potter County, Amarillo and Canyon, all their emergency management officials have requested that these fire warnings get issued to make you aware that there is a fire nearby and that evacuations could be possible. So, we're keeping a very close eye on that one. We're also keeping an eye on this one to the north where right now the entirety of Potter County is underneath a fire warning as well. The phrasing from the National Weather Service says multiple wildfires around the region. There's not necessarily one quite as pressing as the one down in Randall County, but it's still something to be aware of, of course, should they issue any evacuations or anything of that sort.

[00:04:36]So, what we're going to do here is I'm going to switch over in just a second.

[00:04:39]We're going to bring up your SkyTracker cameras. We're going to take a look at what we're seeing around the area. So, let me make sure I just have this set up right for y'all real quick and then we're going to pull this over here.

[00:04:50]All right.

[00:04:52]There we go. Okay. So, let's get this pulled up here. I want to make sure I'm getting this right for y'all here.

[00:04:58]Okay. So, what we're going to start out first with it's going to say Amarillo at the bottom of the screen. You're going to have to bear with me on this. I just want to make sure that I just have this pulled up first rather than just making sure that information there at the bottom. So, we're going to go ahead and Okay. So, there we go. So, this is currently a look a look from Bushland.

[00:05:18]Now, it's going to say Amarillo at the bottom of the screen. We're just going to deal with that for the time being.

[00:05:22]This is Bushland that we're seeing. This is looking south at those Randall County fires. That is that smoke burning and as you can see blowing off towards the west. So, we're seeing some pretty strong winds. We've seen gusts over 60 and 70 mph here as we've gone on into this afternoon period with that strong line of thunderstorms coming through.

[00:05:38]But, one thing you will notice looking at this is generally the fact that you're seeing the storm clouds are starting to kind of go away. Those are generally further off towards the southeast. Now, taking a look at downtown Amarillo, we're going to switch this camera over to our downtown Sky Tracker camera where we're seeing a little bit of smoke right now. We're going to pan this just a little bit off towards kind of the kind of northeast.

[00:05:59]You're seeing just kind of that haze in the distance. Another situation though where the storm clouds, they've kind of passed over. We're still seeing some fires burning. Of course, those winds are still whipping it through the area, but like I said, the most of our storms have kind of left the region. So, what we're going to do here is we're going to come back to our weather graphics just to show you Doppler radar. Now, another thing that's kind of complicated things today is the simple fact that our Amarillo radar, it's not sending out data to what we call third-party resources basically. So, if you were to go to the National Weather Service website, you could see Amarillo's Doppler radar data, but if you use something like RadarScope, of course, our weather graphics here, they're not ingesting any data from the Amarillo radar itself, but they are pulling from Lubbock, our Amarillo or Cannon Air Force Base radar as well as Dodge City.

[00:06:43]So, we're kind of putting those pictures together to gather one complete picture of what's happening around the area.

[00:06:48]But, here in Amarillo down in Canyon, we're not seeing any more storms that are pushing through right now, but what we are seeing is to the southeast. Now, this is one of our last severe thunderstorm warnings in the region right now down off around Childress and Paducah. We've been continually seeing some storms down that direction. That's where some of our strongest storms are at. And actually, what I'm going to do here is I'm going to pull up our Childress camera here for you in just a second as that storm is currently making its way through. The heaviest bit of the storm does look to be past town right now.

[00:07:17]But, you'll see this is Childress. I know it says Amarillo on the screen, but this is Childress right now. This is our Pantex camera. You'll see right there still some good rain showers. There's been some areas where some of those rain showers have been reaching the ground.

[00:07:28]And then so, of course, that's the good news is that there has been some moisture in parts of the area here in Amarillo. Unfortunately, it was just a sprinkle that did blow through. But, let's come back to satellite and radar here.

[00:07:40]I'm going to pull up the information of this current severe thunderstorm warning as it's passing through Childress, Cottle counties. The thing about these storms is they are moving very fast.

[00:07:47]It's moving east at about 30 miles an hour. Right now, what they have it warned for is currently looks to be maybe uh probably some half-dollar size hail, which is the biggest hail we've seen all day long as these storms are now working their way into a little more of a moisture-rich atmosphere. And when they do that, they are having a little bit of a bigger proponent for hail.

[00:08:06]You'll see right here.

[00:08:08]Let me pull this up. You're going to see right here. I'm going [snorts] to circle this for you.

[00:08:13]Right here, that bit of purple you're seeing there in the center of your map, that right there is where your biggest threat of hail is going to be.

[00:08:22]Okay, let me just double-check some information here for you.

[00:08:32]So, that little bit of purple, that bluish and purple, that is where that half-dollar half-dollar size hail is going to be. But outside of that, what we're going to be seeing with this as well is 60 mph wind gusts is what it's currently warned for. So, let's go ahead and animate this out. This is showing the last hour to where it at right now.

[00:08:50]So, it's moving east 30 mph. So, what we're going to do is we're going to draw on a squall line here along this front edge, and then we're going to drag it out about 30 miles. That's going to show where this storm is going to go in the next hour or so. It's going to be getting close to places like Chillicothe there right around 8:24. So, that storm's continuing to migrate its way east on out of the area. And then once it gets clear of us, you're going to notice that we are seeing some informa- or seeing that most of our storm activity is starting to kind of move out just a little bit.

[00:09:35]All right. So, just got some information there from our news director. So if you watch News Channel 10 on cable, you may have seen an emergency signal come out saying that Randall County is being evacuated. We want to let you know that that itself, that's not necessarily correct. That means just parts of Randall County are being evacuated. So for the latest on areas that are being evacuated, go to newschannel10.com.

[00:09:56]We have the latest information right there. So if you watch us on cable, you may have seen an alert come across saying Randall County is being evacuated. We want you to know not the entirety of Randall County. That's not being evacuated. So giving you some clarifying information on that. The latest that we have on newschannel10.com right now, I'm going to pull this up for you real quick, just to let you know.

[00:10:14]Right now they're saying areas in the Hon Gate Road, FM 1714, Arnott Road and FM 1705 are being evacuated right now.

[00:10:21]Chaparral Villas near Brown and Cemetery Roads and areas near 13th Avenue down around Canyon are being evacuated right now. And they say residents from the Canyon Junior High west to Highway 87 are being encouraged to prepare for possible evacuation. So we want to relay that information to you. So if you are in that area, either be ready to evacuate or of course, you've probably already been alerted by emergency officials to go ahead and evacuate. So that's why we get those fire warnings that get issued. And so of course, like I said, this is something that's a very rapidly developing situation. Our news crews are staying on top of it right now.

[00:10:56]Let's go and double check our radar again. Let's pick up where we were at just a second ago. What we're going to do is we're going to switch over to what we call our radar watches and warnings.

[00:11:05]I'm going to zoom out to the whole region. So what you're going to notice here is there's only a couple of severe thunderstorm warnings left in the area right now. Amarillo, pretty much you can kind of draw a line here through most of the region. I'm going to draw it right along here.

[00:11:18]Anywhere west of that line is pretty much clear from any more severe weather.

[00:11:23]Now of course, we're still seeing some strong gusts in parts of the area. I'm going to go and pull that up here real quick. Show you what those strongest gusts have been recently. Our Mesonet sites have been picking up gusts even stronger than that, but you'll notice those gusts out of the south over 30 mph. We're seeing gusts at 37 near Canadian right now. Gusts near 40 in places like Childress. So, obviously, that's why you are seeing, of course, those severe thunderstorm warnings rated for 60 to 70 mph gusts. Right now, recent gusts, thankfully, haven't been quite so bad. But let's go ahead and take a look right now what we're seeing on radar around the region one more time, and then we'll take a look at some model data to let you know what's happening around the region. So, there's the severe thunderstorm warnings. Now, you'll see there in Guymon, it doesn't look like much here as of right now, but right now it's currently warned for 70 mph gusts, penny size hail. So, most of the warnings we've had today have been for the wind threat, not the hail threat. You'll see everything's migrating from the west to the east. Oh, there we go. You just saw it happen live. That severe thunderstorm warning was canceled there over Texas County or most of Texas County. We're still seeing a sliver of Texas County there into Beaver County and northern parts. You'll see up around Ochiltree County still included in the severe thunderstorm warning, even though most of that activity is dying down. That is currently warned for 60 mph gusts. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to drag this over. What we're seeing in this area, now you're going to notice, looking at it right now, it really doesn't look that impressive. Generally, what we are seeing with that is those storms are dying, and as they're dying, the bottoms are essentially falling out of those storms, and they're just sending in wind in just about every direction. So, that is currently warned 60 mph wind gust. The rain is really kind of few and far between there in that part of the area.

[00:13:00]So, we're really not looking at that impressive of a storm type event, but what we are seeing is absolutely possibility of some strong gusts. We're going to take this map out a little bit, pan around the region. There's those storms off towards the southeast. We've been keeping a close eye on those. The strongest storm there around Childress.

[00:13:17]Childress, you're now in the wake of it.

[00:13:18]You might be still seeing some light rain showers. That's the camera view you're seeing up above me right here. I know it says Amarillo, that's just a little glitch on on part, but that's Childress. Still maybe seeing some light rain showers up that direction, but the strongest rain, the heaviest part of the storm is still continuing to work its way on out of the area. We're still expiring thunderstorm warnings around the region, so that's good news there.

[00:13:38]We're going to bring things over to our high-definition model run right now. So, that's painting a pretty good picture as to what we're seeing out there right now. So, if we go ahead and animate this through, you're going to be seeing everything's moving on out of the region here pretty quickly. You really don't see any storms really kind of following behind in the wake of that system with those clouds kind of breaking up overnight and going into your Friday morning. Maybe a small chance tomorrow of some popcorn storms in some places, but it's not really looking to be quite as noteworthy as what we've seen out there for for today, which is of course that's very good news. We don't want to be seeing anything quite as strong today or strong tomorrow as what we're seeing out there for today. That's the good news.

[00:14:19]Okay, let's go and double-check. Let's look at our wind forecast, cuz of course now the big question mark is for our firefighters out there. What kind of conditions are they going to be facing as we go on into the evening period? So, if we animate our wind tracker here, the good news is the strongest winds are being carried out with this system. It's not looking like strong winds are going to be filling in the gaps behind this system. You'll see as a matter of fact, going into the early overnight period, we still around 5 to 15, maybe 10 to 20 mph winds. We'll see that carry into your Friday morning, and then tomorrow maybe a bit breezy at times. We could be seeing some 10 to 20 mph winds at times.

[00:14:51]Should we get any little isolated storms that pop up, could see some strong gusts with them, but outside of that, we're really not looking at a major wind event going into tomorrow, which of course as we know is great news. And we're going to carry those calmer winds on into your Saturday or Friday night into your Saturday morning before stronger winds start to try to come in going into Sunday. But, that'll be something we cover at a later time. So, with the winds calming, temperatures on the way down, that means humidity is going to be on the way up. The unfortunate part is it's still so dry down near the surface that we're not going to see the humidity get boosted all that much. So, let's go ahead and take a look at our humidity trackers. We're down in the mid-teens here so far for the latter parts of our Thursday evening. We're going to get those values up to the high 20s, low to mid 30% range, maybe 40 to 50% off towards the east. Now, that's going to give our firefighters enough of an opportunity with that rising humidity, thankfully, and calmer winds.

[00:15:45]We're not going to be seeing uh those winds and the humidity be a major limiting factor. That's the good news at least on that front. So, that'll help the firefighters overnight, but you are going to be seeing going into tomorrow, though, those values drop again. We're going to get those humidity values down around 9 to 15%. Of course, that is critically dry. So, because of that right now, Lubbock and the Albuquerque Amarillo National or the Lubbock and Albuquerque weather service offices have issued a fire weather watch. That's what we're seeing those counties across our southern ends of the area, western side of the area will probably be watching for some red flag warning issued here in Amarillo as well. So, we're going to monitor for that change, but generally those fire weather watches usually get upgraded to red flag warnings. This is for your Friday. This is going to be going into tomorrow.

[00:16:32]So, in terms of rain showers, we are seeing everything kind of move on out of the area. So, with that being said, I'm going to track back to looks like some people are wanting some updates on the fire. Now, I want to let you know our news crews are currently on their way down to Canyon. We have one crew down there already. We've got another one on the way, so standby for updates on that.

[00:16:49]But, the latest information we have, this fire warning is in effect until 8:00 here in, of course, Texas time.

[00:16:57]Latest for Randall County fires, there is a fire that's burning that's burning about 1,000 acres. That's courtesy of the A&M Forest Service. Areas of Hungate Road, 1714, Arnett Road, and FM 1705 are all being evacuated, as well as Chaparral Villas near Brown and Cemetery Roads being evacuated. And then, areas near 13th Avenue are being evacuated, as well. And they're saying residents from Canyon Junior High West to Highway 87 need to be ready for the possibility of some evacuations as well. They're saying evacuees are asked to go to Cole Community Center. That's at 316th Street there in Canyon. We're also keeping an eye on fires near Brown and Potters at a that's down in Canyon as well. Sauncy and Rice Road, they're south of Amarillo. There's a fire there as well.

[00:17:40]Down in or up in Potter County, there is a grass fire near Crawford Ranch. That's west of Highway 287. That's northwest of Amarillo. The NM Forest Service is responding to assist with containment efforts there. Of course, we have that fire warning for the entirety of Potter County as well. Right now, as we know, there are no current evacuations being issued for Potter County. But like I said, should any of that change, we are going to be keeping an eye on that and be letting you know. Of course, on newschannel10.com, of course, our social media channels are going to be great resources here as we go throughout this evening. So, we're going to be keeping tabs on it. We're going to be keeping you up-to-date with everything that you need to know. Like I said, I hopped on here real quick to let you know about fire conditions, let you know what's happening around the area. I'm going to switch back to our downtown camera where you can see some of that smoke right now.

[00:18:29]I'm going to switch over to that. It's switching over. There we go. There's our downtown SkyTracker camera. I'll pan that just a little bit over a little bit. This is currently that fire that's northwest of town. This is looking from our downtown cameras. You can see that smoke there off in the distance. So, we're going to be monitoring that very closely. We have crews that are keeping an eye on things around the region. The big problem with today is if you would think back to Mother's Day on Sunday, it was cloudy, it was damp outside. We had all the moisture we could ever want with that system. We just didn't have the lift to really capitalize on the rain chances. The big problem with today is we had a whole lot of lift and no moisture to capitalize on it. If we had dew points about 15 to 20° higher than the where they were at, we would be seeing heavy rain. We would have seen some really good rain showers around the area, but unfortunately, that dry air down near the surface just absolutely just kneecapped any potential for that rain to really materialize. And unfortunately, we had dry winds. The lightning striking those dry fuels is what sparked a lot of those fires. Let's take a look at what's happening there from Bushland. So far, at least with our current SkyTrack camera network, Bushland is giving us our best view of that fire there down off in West Canyon.

[00:19:38]So, I'm going to pull that up real quick here. Give me a second. This one gives us a great view of that smoke. And then of course, like I said, we have crews that are watching this. This is looking south from Bushland. There's that smoke blowing off towards the west or to the east. The fires are to the west of Canyon. Right now, a lot of smoke blowing east across Canyon right now.

[00:19:55]So, thing about it is, stay tuned to NewsChannel 10. We're going to be keeping you up-to-date with that. We're sending crews out there. We might do some live streams on that, so standby there. We'll have the latest for you on the news at 10 as well as well as all of our social media channels. So, make sure to stay tuned for that. We'll be keeping you guys up-to-date with everything that's going on. NewsChannel10.com will be your best resource for the latest numbers and evacuations for any fires down near Canyon. So, we want y'all to stay safe. We want you to stay informed with what's going on. So, y'all make sure stay locked here to NewsChannel 10. to give you a quick update on the forecast. I think we're behind the storms now. They're moving on out of the area. Now, we're looking for those winds to come. Hopefully, humidity comes up as temperatures cool this evening, and that will certainly help those firefighting efforts. But again, the latest and best information will be found at NewsChannel10.com, so head that direction. We'll be back with more on your forecast. You can of course have our First Alert Weather app that will let you check current conditions as well. And of course, make sure to have ways to stay informed. Emergency officials will of course be issuing those evacuation orders should they be needed. So, stay tuned to NewsChannel 10. We'll keep you up-to-date with everything that's going on. Stay safe out there, and enjoy the rest of your Thursday as we continue to ride out this wildfire event. We'll keep you up-to-date with everything that's going on as soon as we get that information.