Wildfire in Donley, Texas

The Paper Wings wildfire ignited due to dry lightning and burned 439 acres. Prior to the dry lightning we had several hours of critical Fire Weather that started around 1 in the afternoon. So add that to the dry fuels and it makes for easy ignition from either humans or lightning.

Without any significant rainfall across the region, dry conditions persisted through much of April and resulted in multiple days of critical fire weather conditions. On April 12th and 13th, warm temperatures combined with an extremely low relative humidity and gusty southerly winds to bring elevated and critical fire weather conditions to the Texas Panhandle. Given the continued dry fuels from the lack of significant rainfall, these conditions made it possible for wildfires to develop. In addition, a isolated thunderstorms occurred in the southeast Texas Panhandle on April 13th, which resulted in lightning sparking a wildfire there. We had two fires of note, one was the Horny Toad Incident, which was about 10 miles south of Borger and would go on to burn about 680 acres. The Paper Wings Fire 8 miles southwest of Hedley, caused by lightning, and would go on to burn 439 acres.