A fire weather watch has been issued for the Rio Grande Valley and South Texas for Monday in a forecast for explosively high winds in the region.
A gale watch has been issued for coastal waters.
“Winds are really going to be the main factor, or the culprit, for what we’re going to be expecting tomorrow,” Brian Mejia, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Brownsville, said Sunday. “Winds are really going to pick up between mid-morning and the afternoon hours tomorrow, and we should see some pretty strong winds, I would say 25 to 35 miles per hour sustained in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, with gusts to 45 to 50 miles per hour possible during that time.”
The fire weather watch issued Sunday by the Brownsville weather station comes just days after 40 wildfires scorched nearly 9,000 acres across Texas. Most were located in Central and Northeast Texas but several small fires ignited in South Texas.
Monday’s fire weather forecast from the Texas A&M Forest Service shows moderate conditions for fires in coastal Cameron and Willacy counties, a high rating for most of the rest of Cameron and Willacy counties, and a very high danger for far western Willacy and most of Hidalgo County.
“We don’t normally put out a fire weather watch when we have southeasterly winds,” Mejia said. “Normally our fire weather watches come behind cold fronts because of the drier air and the windy conditions behind cold fronts, but because there’s been a lot of fire activity across our area of responsibility, really for the last couple of weeks, there have been multiple fires that have broken out.”
“We thought it would probably be wise to put out at least a fire weather watch even though critical fire watch conditions may not be completely met,” he added.
Although a fire weather watch has not been issued for Tuesday, conditions could actually worsen.
On Tuesday, the fire danger forecast is high for coastal Cameron and Willacy counties and very high for western Willacy and Cameron counties and Hidalgo County. Starr and Zapata counties are listed as being under an extreme wildfire threat.
“We do have that cold front coming through on Tuesday, and that air will be much drier,” Mejia said. “Winds won’t be quite as strong, but the combination of the winds and relative humidity values for Tuesday potentially could be dangerous.”
“We’ll have relative humidity values in the teens and lower 20 across the coast and teens in other portions of the Rio Grande Valley,” he added. “And even though the winds won’t be as strong as they will be tomorrow, they’re still going to be strong enough that if a fire gets going, it could spread pretty quickly.”
The cold front Tuesday should arrive around mid-morning, or at least that’s the best forecast model at this point, Mejia said.
Even so, it isn’t going to drop temperatures all that much, but will bring in much drier air. Temperatures Monday will be between the mid-80s and mid-90s, and then between 80 and 85 or so on Tuesday. Lows will be in the 50s and 60s.
The gale watch will be in effect from Baffin Bay to the mouth of the Rio Grande in both the Laguna Grande and the Gulf of Mexico beginning this morning and continuing through Monday afternoon.
Waters in the bay will be very rough, and out in the gulf, mariners can expect heavy seas with wave heights between eight and 11 feet.
