It’s become an extremely windy day across Texas, thanks to a strong storm system over southern Kansas creating very strong pressure gradient winds. In addition, today’s weather setup is also allowing strong winds from the middle and lower atmosphere to make it to the surface, where they are enhancing the strong gusts. Since late morning, wind gusts of 40-55 mph have been common across most of the Hill Country and Central Texas. Just before 2 pm, Austin-Bergstrom International Airport’s recorded a peak gust of 48 mph. The strong west winds have also brought in some extremely dry air from northern Mexico. Relative humidity levels as of 2 pm were generally between 10 and 20 percent across the region.
Forecasts call for very strong winds with gusts up to 50 mph to continue through late afternoon. The wind is expected to decrease slightly, with gusts to near 35 mph are predicted up to midnight. Gusts to near 20 mph are forecast after midnight. For Wednesday, forecasts call for northerly winds with speeds of 10-15 mph and gusts to 30 mph. Light winds are predicted for Wednesday night, but gusty winds to near 30 mph are forecast to return Thursday into Thursday night.
The combination of the very strong winds and low relative humidity levels will cause an extreme fire danger through late afternoon. Any fires that happen to develop today will rapidly increase in size and intensity, move quickly, and become very difficult to suppress and control. A Red Flag Warning remains posted through late afternoon. After sunset Tuesday evening, the threat for wildfires will slowly decrease as relative humidity levels rise and winds decrease.
A visible satellite image from just before 2 pm showed a large area of West Texas dust covering much of the northern and central Hill Country as well as a large part of West Texas. (the enhanced are of brown over these areas). The visibility was down to about a mile in Junction and Brady, and near 3 miles in Llano. The area of dust is spreading to the east-northeast may spread to the Austin/Interstate 35 corridor by late afternoon.
For those traveling across the Hill Country this afternoon, take note if the visibility becomes too
low to drive, pull off the road as far as possible. The National Weather Service advises to stop and turn off all lights. Take your foot off the brakes so taillights are not illuminated and wait for conditions to improve.
Today’s very windy and dusty weather is a somewhat rare event for the eastern Hill Country and Central Texas regions. From a climatological perspective, it is an event seen on average only about once over a ten year period.
