Red Flag Warning Issued for South Plains and Southern Texas Panhandle
This alert is no longer in effect.
NOAA issued it on May 22, 2026, 3 months ago. Warnings of this kind stay in effect for hours to a few days, so this page is a historical record of what was issued, not a current warning. For conditions where you are right now, check weather.gov (US), weather.gc.ca (Canada), the Met Office (UK), or the Bureau of Meteorology (Australia).
Areazine synthesizes this NWS weather alert directly from NOAA's official public data feed. See our methodology for full source attribution and refresh cadence.
NWS Lubbock has issued a Red Flag Warning for critical fire weather conditions across 22 Texas counties until 9 PM CDT Friday.
Read this weather record in 30 seconds
- Record type
- Red Flag Warning
- Affected area
- South Plains, Rolling Plains, and Southern Texas Panhandle
- Issued
- May 22, 2026
- Issuing authority
- NWS Lubbock TX
Fire-weather notices describe conditions that can support rapid fire spread; they do not report that a fire is present. Check local emergency sources for any active incident.
Record status: historical. It was issued 3 months ago; use the issuing agency's live warning service for current conditions in South Plains, Rolling Plains, and Southern Texas Panhandle.
Alert Details
A Red Flag Warning has been issued by the National Weather Service in Lubbock, TX. The alert is effective from May 15 at 11:14 AM CDT and remains in effect until May 15 at 9:00 PM CDT.
Affected Areas
The warning covers the following counties in Texas: Parmer, Castro, Swisher, Briscoe, Hall, Childress, Bailey, Lamb, Hale, Floyd, Motley, Cottle, Cochran, Hockley, Lubbock, Crosby, Dickens, Yoakum, Terry, Lynn, Garza, and Kent. This includes the South Plains, Rolling Plains, and Southern Texas Panhandle regions.
What You Should Do
A Red Flag Warning means critical fire weather conditions are occurring or will shortly occur. Residents should avoid outdoor burning and be prepared for any fires that develop to spread rapidly.
Expected Conditions
Southwest winds of 15 to 25 mph are expected Friday, increasing to 20 to 30 mph on Saturday. Relative humidity may drop as low as 7 percent. Fuels are critically dry.
Timeline
The Red Flag Warning is in effect until 9:00 PM CDT on May 15, 2026. A Fire Weather Watch is also noted for Saturday afternoon through Saturday evening.
Original source: NOAA Official Notice ↗
Related Weather Alerts
All Weather Alerts →Nationwide notices with similar length or severity timing 8
Two Areazine-derived peer sets for this NWS weather alert: nearest notices by body length and by same severity near the same agency date. Peers come from other categories so they are not the same-feed Related list above.
Similar body length
Nearest notices by article body length (1,110 characters here).
Similar severity timing
Same severity (high) notices issued closest in time to May 22, 2026.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about this NWS weather alert.