Wildfire in Cimarron, Oklahoma

The Sharpe incident was caused by lightning on the evening of May 15th. And the strong winds associated helped drive the fire to the north. With several days of critical to extreme fire conditions it's been a challenge to control. On Sunday the 17th as the fire spread north into Colorado it threatened the town of Campo, CO and forced mandatory evacuations for that town. It also shut down highway 287 at the OK/CO border. As of May 19th the fire has burned 29,209 acres and is only 5 percent contained.

A prolonged hot and dry period was set up for the Panhandles in mid May. And with the lack of significant rainfall to help transition the grasses from cured to green, the fuels were well above the 90th percentile in dryness. While it's not uncommon for a high based storm or two to occur west of the dryline and create dry thunderstorms, on May 14th it was certainly more scattered to nearly widespread storms that occurred. Several lightning ignitions occurred, and given that the storms had severe dry microbursts associated, the fires that ignited would spread quickly. Thereafter the Panhandles would go through several consecutive days of critical to extremely critical conditions. And the issues of any new starts, as well as active fires that ignited on May 14th would take another run were of high concern. Overall 20 wildfires ranging from over 34,000 acres to some as small as a few acres would ignite in the TX/OK Panhandle between the 14th and the 18th.