Wildfire in Oldham, Texas

A multistate fire known as the Line Fire which had a combined total burn area of 30,144 acres, burned about 10,000 of that was on the Texas side in Oldham and Hartley County. The fire started the afternoon of the 14th due to lightning, but wouldn't enter Texas until just after midnight on the 15th CDT. The fire is currently noted to be 90 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.