Wildfire in Randall County, Texas

The Chocolate Chip Fire ignited on the morning of Friday the 15th about 17 miles southwest of Canyon, TX. The winds caused this fire within just hours of igniting to expand to over 10,000 acres moving so fast it managed to jump interstate 27. By Friday afternoon it merged with the Hunggate Fire. At this point since it is part of the Hunggate fire it's 95 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.