Valley wind machine to crank up

After taking a bit of a break, our spring winds will be making a comeback. We start off on the breezy side this afternoon with southeast winds at 15-20 miles per hour (MPH), gusting to 30 MPH. This will be more of our typical spring wind type of afternoon. However, the Valley wind machine will be a little more active starting Thursday.

Basically, we get winds wrapping around high pressure to our east and low pressure to our west and north that funnels it right through deep South Texas. Right now, it looks like Thursday and Friday may be our windiest of the next few days with wind gusts close to 40 MPH possible both days. We could see some wind advisories issued for part of the Valley either day and your Valley Storm Team will be keeping an eye on that.

The windy conditions, combined with modest humidity, and lots of dry grass and brush will combine to increase concerns over wildfires. We still have lots of dry fire fuel, especially in areas in the western parts of the Valley and the northern ranchlands.

In these conditions, any fire could quickly spread and get out of control. Remember, there are burn bans in place for all four main Valley counties. The Texas A&M AgriLife Extension fire condition forecast has our area in high to very high fire danger categories for Thursday.

Avoid any outdoor burning the next few days. Even in a controlled burn situation, embers can easily be picked up by the winds and can spark a fire outside of the controlled burn area.