The Smokehouse Creek Fire, which started NNE of Amarillo is now over 1 million acres. A million acres is a hard number to comprehend. I recall that I was on, what passed for a big fire, in the Salmon River Country of Idaho. IIRC, that fire was less than 100k acres and took 20 minutes to fly over in a helicopter. This is 10x 100,000, and the fire has crossed the state line into Oklahoma.

Panhandle Texas received rain and snow yesterday (Thursday, February 29), but by Saturday afternoon a return to dry and high winds is in the forecast. Firefighters have to make real headway before the weather changes back. My wife, the kids and I got to know the people from this part of the country a little bit when we lived in extreme SE Colorado and I worked on the National Grasslands. Dalhart, Dumas, and Amarillo—some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. Keep them in your prayers.

quote:

The Smokehouse Creek fire alone, which broke out Monday afternoon about 65 miles north of Amarillo, surpassed the million acreage mark and spreads across Texas and Oklahoma. It is larger than the East Amarillo Complex fire in 2006, which blazed through 906,000 acres of land and used to hold the record for the state's largest wildfire.

The Smokehouse Creek fire was followed by a second one to the west called the Windy Deuce fire, which burned 142,000 acres of land across multiple counties north of Amarillo.

Texas Tribune News Story

My mom’s from Perryton and a lot of our family is up there, and in Spearman and thereabouts. Lots of farm, crop and gas and oil property. We also have wheat land in far SE Colorado. From what I’m hearing our bunch has been lucky. Maybe some pasture loss south of Spearman. A gal I work with’s family is in the area more affected. Her stepdad is in a nursing home that had to be evacuated. A lot around it burned, but not that facility, so they will be able to take them back. Another close friend from Pampa is still pretty worried. Saddest thing is hearing about all the folks having to walk their land and shoot hundreds of cattle that have suffered burns.

Hope this all turns out as good as possible for your family, Melissa. God Bless them.

My career managing livestock grazing and friends in ranching, always causes me to consider those folks when stories like this surface. I know the time, effort, money and love that it takes to put together a good herd of cattle escapes most people. The picture you painted of ranch families putting their cattle out of their misery is a hard thing to imagine. What they must be going through…

quote:

Originally posted by TMats:
Hope this all turns out as good as possible for your family, Melissa. God Bless them.

My career managing livestock grazing and friends in ranching, always causes me to consider those folks when stories like this surface. I know the time, effort, money and love that it takes to put together a good herd of cattle escapes most people. The picture you painted of ranch families putting their cattle out of their misery is a hard thing to imagine. What they must be going through…

My grandad was one of twelve kids raised in a little house up there, much of it during the dust bowl, and all of those kids went to college and became successful people. One of my mom’s cousins is in multiple interviews in Ken Burn’s the Dust Bowl documentary.
Yeah, I would find it so hard to put one animal out of its misery, much less hundreds.

This seems unrelated to the wild fire. Wonder if this is arson?

https://twitter.com/rawsalerts.../1763728997077119164