High winds causing issues across North Texas
DALLAS - A Wind Advisory is in effect for North Texas Thursday and is causing issues, including power outages and flight cancellations. The elevated fire danger is another top safety concern.
The National Weather Service reported top peak wind gusts of 58 mph at Dallas Love Field and 56 mph in McKinney as of 2 p.m. Thursday.
This has caused delays and cancellations for flights in and out of Dallas.
DFW Airport reported high winds caused the airport to operate in a northwest flow, so only our two diagonal runways are in use. This has led to delays of more than two hours for inbound flights and delays of about an hour for flights leaving Dallas.
As of 3:30 p.m., Oncor is reporting more than 66,000 outages in the Metroplex.
The outages have caused a delay for DART earlier in the day, and has caused some traffic lights to be knocked off power.
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"I did not plan this very well, I should’ve put my hair up but there’s nothing wrong with a bad hair day I guess," Saira Landeros said.
A bizarre weather pattern turned downtown Fort Worth and much of North Texas into one big wind tunnel.
"The pressure is trying to increase very fast, and then with that, the winds are kind of the result of the atmosphere and the environment to kind of balance it out," NWS meteorologist Patricia Sanchez said.
The low pressure storm system moving east, mixed with a separate system to the west, created the high wind gusts.
Downtown Dallas was another scene where the wind gusts had wind and flags moving.
"Each event is different. Some events create a line of storms, others don’t produce any lines of storms or anything," Sanchez said. "This system in particular, we get them once in a while, they get stronger as they move east, and then with that, they create the low pressure that moves to the east and high pressure toward the other side over to the west."
Some visitors at the Fort Worth Zoo Thursday didn’t seem to mind a bit of wild wind.
"It feels good and fall is my favorite season," Landry Nichols said.
"We could be hot and sweaty. It’s beautiful outside. I’ll take a little bit of wind, absolutely," Candice Adams added.