It was so windy today that it blew over street light poles in Gruver. And on some where the poles are still standing, the lights themselves are on the ground.

I was driving south at 70 mph in heavy rain, and drops were only hitting my rear window. None on the windshield.

Looks like Friday (3/14) is going to be a doozy.

The wind is the only downside of what is otherwise (to me) the perfect place to live.

Just got an automated call from Xcel, telling me they may turn off power on Friday, to help avoid wild fires

Last year's fires in Fritch and Canadian, understandably, have them spooked.

Tomorrow is going to be horrendous.

We are in Galveston for Spring Break and we're supposed to fly back in to Amarillo today. Decided flights probably would get canceled so rented a one way rental to drive back.

Only upside is we are stopping in College Station to watch baseball tonight!! Yall stay safe.

We have a barn about 6 miles SW of Canyon. As of 8:44am, the alarm system reported power is out. So Xcel is starting to shed power lines.

The last map I saw showed they would keep power on in town, and shut down a lot of rural areas, which makes sense

Started a thread on the Outdoors Board for anyone who wants to contribute.

Also, big traffic pileup on I-27 south of Canyon due to blowing dust

https://texags.com/forums/34/topics/3532868

This one was a doozy!

Drove from Lubbock to Glen Rose today and it was terrible right outside Roscoe. Was really regretting not staying in Lubbock overnight as planned.

We went back home to Pampa on Thursday night. Thank heavens not Friday.

The highest wind gust was 100mph at the Pampa Airport.

It was a very nasty day.

For you Panhandle veterans, is this the windiest spring you can remember? If not, much more wind than normal?

I grew up in west Texas and lived there most of my life, so I'm used to wind. But even to me, the wind has really been blowing hard in the Hill Country and in Aggieland.

I grew up in the Permian Basin and I don't remember the wind and dust ever being as bad as it has been out there this year. Videos look like the 1950s Dust Bowl days.

Depends on how you measure it. Last Friday was the windiest day I've experienced in 11 years, and the people who have been here the whole lives seem to agree last Friday was historically bad.

But overall, I don't feel like the totally number of windy days has been higher than normal, and in fact, outside of last Friday (and this afternoon is supposed to get bad again), I actually feel like we've had fewer windy days than normal.

It is very, very normal for every few days to be a red flag warning day the entire spring time.

Drought in 2011 and current drought make winds seem much worse

But Friday is easily top 10 worst wind I've seen

Waiting on a Natty said:

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For you Panhandle veterans, is this the windiest spring you can remember? If not, much more wind than normal?

I grew up in west Texas and lived there most of my life, so I'm used to wind. But even to me, the wind has really been blowing hard in the Hill Country and in Aggieland.

I grew up in the Permian Basin and I don't remember the wind and dust ever being as bad as it has been out there this year. Videos look like the 1950s Dust Bowl days.

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I don't think MORE windy days, but higher wind speeds and more dust than I can remember, at least since the 70's.

But it seems more widespread. We've been down in the Hill Country and on the coast this month, and it's windy, even major windy (blew the roof off a business in Kingsland), everywhere.

The worst dust I have seen was in the early to mid 60s.

I remember one Sunday morning, we had to go pick up my grandparents because they couldn't drive to church that day. The dust was so bad that you couldn't see the fence rows from the highway on our standard two lane country roads. I remember sitting there looking out the window wondering how we managed to stay on the highway.

I asked my grandmother if that was like the Dust Bowl and she replied that the Dust Bowl was much worse.

April 14, 1935.

Easter Sunday dust storm. Still the worst on record

https://www.weather.gov/oun/events-19350414

CanyonAg77 said:

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April 14, 1935.

Easter Sunday dust storm. Still the worst on record

https://www.weather.gov/oun/events-19350414

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Definitely not a good Sunday.

I saw something similar to this once in the 1960s. It was a Sunday afternoon. After church, we had a pot luck dinner and then a day of cleaning around the church.

There was a barn from back in the days when the preacher still had horses. I remember spending a couple of hours there helping clean up the grounds around the barn.

At some point in the afternoon, I could see a line of black to the northwest that kept getting higher as the afternoon progressed. The old timers must have known what it was, but not me. Even when it was a mile or so away from us, I had no idea what it was.

Sometime in the middle of the afternoon, we had moved our attention from the barn to the well house and that is when it hit us hard. The afternoon had been quite warm, but it turned cold really fast when it hit. I would guess the temperatures fell by about 10 to 20 degrees in a minute or two. I started running for the church about 300 feet away and was shivering badly from the cold when I got inside.

If someone had tripped, we would not have been able to see them and they might easily have died if they weren't able to get up. Fortunately, we all made it back to the church okay. After something like 15 to 30 minutes, we left and went home. I assume that part of that time included the adults checking to make sure that we all made it back okay.

There are multiple stories around the area of people who went missing during that big one in 35, and were never found. A dune formed over them and they are still there.