High winds, low humidity, and dry vegetation created the perfect environment for swift-moving wildfires on Sunday, prompting weather experts to warn of an extraordinary fire risk over a large portion of New Mexico.
A wide area of central and southern New Mexico, as well as far West Texas, including the cities of Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico, and El Paso, Texas, are at exceptional risk of wildfires, according to the Storm Prediction Center of the National Weather Service. Much of the remainder of New Mexico and a sizable chunk of Colorado are at a lower risk.
“It’s a typical setup for fire weather, especially across the high plains,” said Bob Oravec, a meteorologist with the Weather Prediction Center. “So if any fires start, they can spread pretty rapidly.”
While most of the rest of the country faces a very low risk of severe weather on Sunday, analysts predict that a powerful system moving across the western U.S. will cause severe thunderstorms when it progresses into the Upper Midwest on Monday.
Large areas of Iowa, southeastern Minnesota, and western Wisconsin could see destructive winds, powerful tornadoes, and very large hail starting Monday afternoon and continuing into the evening, the Storm Prediction Center said.
