Dozens of fires across Oklahoma have destroyed nearly 300 structures and burned close to 200,000 acres, Gov. Kevin Stitt said Saturday morning, as dangerous fire conditions persisted from Texas to Nebraska. The fires were fueled by low humidity, dry vegetation and hurricane-force winds that threatened areas from the Texas Panhandle all the way to Iowa. On Saturday morning, Oklahomans were still assessing the damage, but videos on social media showed houses consumed by flames in parts of Stillwater, Okla., a university town of about 50,000 people. Governor Stitt said the fires had destroyed at least 293 structures and led to the death of one person in a vehicle. Some fires were still smoldering on Saturday morning, officials said. Governor Stitt declared a state of emergency for 12 counties on Saturday. More than 150 wildfires were burning in the early morning hours of Saturday in Oklahoma alone, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. So many fires had erupted around the state that the usual system of mutual aid hadn’t been available Friday night, said Clay Abercrombie, the mayor of Mannford, Okla. “So it was kind of, to each his own,” Mr. Abercrombie said.Mark Goeller, director of Oklahoma Forestry Services, called the disaster “historic.” In 40 years with the agency, he said, he had “never seen anything as bad as what we saw yesterday.” For the governor, the loss was personal: He lost a farmhouse near Luther, not far from Oklahoma City, the state capital. Fierce winds on Friday grounded aerial firefighting tools, including the “super scooper” planes that can drop thousands of gallons of water onto a blaze. On Saturday, they were preparing to fly, said Keith Merckx, a spokesman for the Oklahoma Forestry Services. It may take days to assess the damage, he added. Emergency crews in both Oklahoma and Texas were scrambling to keep up with all the blazes popping up across the map. The largest fire, the 840 Road fire in western Oklahoma near the Texas border, had burned nearly 30,000 acres as of Saturday morning and was 0 percent contained, according to Oklahoma Forestry Services. The service warned that while Saturday’s conditions were better, a red flag warning remained in effect in parts of the Panhandle and western Oklahoma. “New wildfire activity will continue to occur compounded by a tremendous workload containing the active fires,” the service wrote in a Saturday morning update. Phillip Ware, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Norman, Okla., said that gusts of up to 80 miles per hour in some places roared across plains where grass and shrubs have not yet begun to grow and turn green. Editors’ Picks His Life Savings Were Mailed to Him by Paper Check. Now, It’s Gone. Is There a Least Bad Alcohol? Help! How Do I Make Sense of All These Trends? “A lot of the vegetation is still dormant, which makes it very susceptible to fire,” he said. Stillwater, around 45 miles north of Oklahoma City, issued a mandatory evacuation order Friday night for a zone that covered several square miles. There were active blazes in that area, including structural fires, the Stillwater Emergency Management Agency said on Facebook. It did not elaborate on what kind of structures. Stillwater is home to Oklahoma State University, which canceled the baseball, softball and tennis events that had been scheduled for Saturday. Early Saturday morning, mandatory evacuation orders were lifted in parts of the city, allowing some residents to return home. A strong storm driving gusty winds and dry air across a parched landscape was fueling dangerous fire conditions across a wide swath of the country, from eastern New Mexico and Colorado to parts of the Midwest. Forecasters warned that more outbreaks appeared likely over the weekend. In Camden County, Mo., in the center of the state, officials said a fire had destroyed about 30 structures, with damage assessments ongoing. The authorities were urging people to stay off the roads as clouds of thick, red dirt and even thicker clouds of billowing dust severely limited visibility. Martín Gomez, 28, a truck driver, was forced to pull over at a truck stop in Canyon, Texas, because of the danger, he said. “My family really doesn’t want me to travel in this,” he said, “but I have to make this delivery.”In the region around Lubbock and Amarillo in Texas, Highway Patrol officials reported more than three dozen car crashes. Preliminary reports showed that at least four people had died in crashes around Amarillo, according to Sgt. Cindy Barkley with the Texas Department of Public Safety. Images on social media showed a dystopian view of the area. Emergency workers were confronting a heavy dust storm as they went car by car looking for anyone trapped inside. A man making one of the videos could be heard saying, “You want to go to Mars? This is Mars.” Roughly 38,000 customers were without power across northern Texas and parts of Oklahoma on Saturday morning, according to poweroutage.us. The authorities warned that rolling blackouts were a possibility to prevent fires caused by downed power lines. Angela Morland, the owner of Cactus Inn & RV Parking in McLean, Texas, a motel built in the 1950s, said in a phone interview that she had been ordered to evacuate with her guests on Friday afternoon. She was staying in the basement of a Methodist church about 20 miles away. Many people had gotten rooms at her motel to seek refuge from the highway winds. “Go east,” Ms. Morland, 57, said she told her guests when she learned they had to leave. Ms. Morland said she could smell the fire when she packed into her vehicle with her dog, a Rhodesian Ridgeback named Stella, and a stranger. She said about 50 other evacuees were staying with her in the church basement. “I was frightened,” she said. Alanreed, another small community in Gray County, about 60 miles east of Amarillo, was also advised to evacuate on Friday because of the threat of fire, said Dustin Miller, an emergency management spokesman for the city of Pampa, the county seat. He said that wind gusts in the area had reached 101 miles per hour, diminishing visibility and making travel treacherous. “It’s dying down slowly, but not enough,” Mr. Miller said. He said there were no injuries or property damage reported as of Friday afternoon in the county. But at least two semi-trucks had flipped over on Interstate 40. Officials had been anticipating the fierce storms. On Thursday, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas directed the Division of Emergency Management to deploy all necessary resources to the affected areas ahead of the wildfires. The Panhandle, a sparsely populated area, is no stranger to fire disasters. A year ago, downed power lines ignited a wildfire known as the Smokehouse Creek fire, which burned more than a million acres, consuming houses, scorching vast ranch lands and killing livestock. It was the largest blaze on record in Texas.

A potent storm is expected to deliver significant precipitation across California on Wednesday and Thursday, soaking coastal areas and bringing up to an inch and a half of rain to urban areas including San Francisco and Los Angeles. Several feet of snow is forecast to fall in the Sierra Nevada and cause travel delays. There is a heightened risk for urban flooding and landslides, including debris flows in areas of Los Angeles that were burned by wildfires earlier this year. A series of evacuation warnings and orders were in effect on Wednesday in areas that had been affected by the Palisades and Eaton fires, and others, including in parts of Malibu, Pacific Palisades and Sierra Madre.The county posted a map with the evacuations. (An evacuation warning means there’s impending danger and residents should prepare to leave, while an order means there’s an immediate threat and residents should leave immediately.) A big snow dump is expected in the Sierra. The storm is also expected to bring heavy rain to Northern California and significant snow to some of the state’s mountain regions. “This is a widespread system that’s going to affect much of the state, which has not been the case with many storms this year,” said Brian Hurley, a meteorologist with the Weather Prediction Center. The storm is poised to unleash moisture, whether rain or snow, as it moves up and over mountains near the coast. The California Coastal Ranges, stretching between Del Norte and Humboldt Counties to the north and Santa Barbara County to the south, are forecast to receive up to four inches of precipitation. Mountains around Los Angeles County are expected to see similar amounts. This storm is predicted to be a big snow maker for the Sierra Nevada, with up to four feet of snow possible on Donner Summit, which many people drive over on Highway 80 as they travel between the Sacramento Valley and the Tahoe Basin. To the south in Yosemite National Park, the highest elevations could receive up to three feet of snow and the valley close to one foot. “This is definitely a colder system than we’re accustomed to in March, not too unusual but colder than we’ve seen in a while for March,” said Brian Ochs, a meteorologist with the Weather Service office in Hanford, Calif. Snow could fall at elevations as low as 3,000 to 4,000 feet on Wednesday, and could even get down to 2,500 feet on Thursday, Mr. Hurley said. In the San Francisco Bay Area, Mount Diablo in the East Bay and Mount Hamilton in the South Bay are expected to receive dustings. The storm is likely to be the state’s last big shot at significant amounts of rain and snow before the end of winter, when the state receives most of its annual precipitation. “In the last couple of years, we’ve had storms in April, but they tend to be less frequent,” said Mr. Hurley. The snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, a crucial water source for the state, was 81 percent of the historic average as of Tuesday, and any storms that arrive in March could help offset the deficit. While the northern Sierra has received an onslaught of storms that built up a big snowpack, the southern half has seen much less precipitation. The storm is expected to whip up winds across the state and forecasters warned of downed trees, power outages and delays at airports.

As powerful storms swept across Central Florida on Monday morning, an Orlando television station’s weather camera captured a tornado hitting the station. “Take shelter!” a Fox 35 morning meteorologist, Brooks Garner, shouted on the air, warning co-workers to get under their desks — the designated safe spaces for such occurrences. He had been delivering updates on tornado warnings for Volusia and Seminole counties when rainy and windy conditions rapidly worsened, turning images into a blurry gray on the monitor. “We’re catching debris right now on the roof,” Mr. Garner said. “Seek shelter immediately,” he added. “Get under your desks, guys. Anchors, under your desks!” He described debris flying across Interstate 4 just north of Orlando, into the neighborhood of Lake Mary and into Sanford, Fla. “This is a confirmed tornado,’’ Mr. Garner announced to viewers as power to the station flickered out. “This is a very serious situation. This is a real, live tornado. It just hit our station.” The whole episode was brief, lasting about a minute or so, and staff members continued to work and assess damage to the area — and to their own studio. One Fox employee shared a photo of damage to vehicles in the station’s parking lot from the severe weather. Pictures from the Seminole Fire Department showed a home that had collapsed just before 10 a.m. on Monday. “Due to the weather impact, there is a collapsed home on the 2100 block of Blue Iris in Longwood and another damaged home,” the department said in an email. “Residents are currently safe from the collapsed home.” Two people inside the home were uninjured. The Fire Department also shared photos of firefighters with saws working to remove toppled trees that blocked roadways. It said it was working with the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office and Emergency Management to assess any further damage to the area. Preliminary estimates from the National Weather Service, which had been warning of tornadoes throughout the morning,confirmed that a tornado had carved about a 1.8-mile path through the Longwood area of Seminole County on Monday. An assessment team with the Weather Service said the tornado may have reached an EF-2 (up to 115 m.p.h. winds) before it crossed Interstate 4 in Lake Mary where the Fox station is. After warning his colleagues on the air, Mr. Garner turned to his local viewers with the same urgency as the storm moved across the area. “Get to the ground level, an interior room away from the windows,” he said, adding, “I have been doing this a long time, and that’s the first time a tornado has hit me while I am doing the weather.”

The wildfires that broke out on Long Island Saturday afternoon and spread over hundreds of acres appeared to be accidental, caused by a failed attempt to make s’mores in a backyard, local officials said on Monday. The preliminary determination came after detectives with the Suffolk County Police Department conducted an investigation into the cause of the fires, interviewing 911 callers and using drones and helicopters to determine whether arson had played a role. What started as a backyard fire in Manorville, near Sunrise Highway on Long Island’s South Shore, became several blazes as strong winds contributed to the embers’ spread, officials said at a news conference on Monday. The fires were under control by Sunday morning and were 100 percent contained on Monday, said Amanda Lefton, the acting commissioner of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. Kevin Catalina, the Suffolk County police commissioner, said that around 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, a person in Manorville was trying to make s’mores but was initially unable to light a fire because of the wind. The person used cardboard to light the fire, he said, and soon the backyard area went up in flames. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT That fire was put out within an hour, the commissioner said, but a few hours later, another fire was reported less than a quarter mile southeast of the initial fire. “The wind was blowing very strongly from the northwest, so that path makes perfect sense,” he said, adding that two additional fires were reported later. “It is believed that the embers from each fire traveled and continuously started more fires,” he said. Commissioner Catalina said that while that was the working theory of the fire’s cause, the police department planned to interview every 911 caller and rule out other possibilities before making a final determination. The area affected, the Long Island Pine Barrens, is an ecosystem that depends on fire in order to flourish. But officials said that the proliferation of the southern pine beetle, a species that kills pines and leaves behind bone-dry tree bark, might have also contributed to the rapid spread of the wildfires. “There are dead trees all over because of them,” Edward P. Romaine, the Suffolk County executive, said over the weekend, adding that thousands of trees in the area had succumbed to the insect over the last decade. The National Weather Service warned early on Saturday on social media that low humidity and northwest winds of 30 to 35 miles per hour would create an “elevated risk for fire spread.” Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency in response to the fires and instituted a burn ban on Long Island. The National Guard was among the agencies on the ground working to extinguish the fire. An HH-60W Jolly Green II helicopter from the 106th Rescue Wing also helped with the response. More than 80 fire departments and 10 emergency medical service units responded from Suffolk County, Mr. Romaine said during the news conference. “Without the combined efforts of everyone involved, we would not have been able to stop this fire,” Mr. Romaine said. “This was a fire that could have been far more serious than it was.” The fires burned two structures, and one firefighter was hospitalized with second-degree burns to the face, officials said over the weekend. Another firefighter suffered a head injury.

One person was dead and hundreds of thousands of customers were without power in eastern Australia as the weakened storm formerly known as Tropical Cyclone Alfred made landfall north of Brisbane late Saturday. Communities were at risk of major flooding, and officials warned that the storm could bring heavy rains and dangerous winds. One man died near the small town of Dorrigo, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a statement on Saturday. The police said that a body found on Saturday was believed to be the remains of a man who had been reported missing in flooding in the town, which was pummeled with more than 10 inches of rain overnight after days of heavy downpour. The man had been driving a car that was swept away, according to the police. He managed to get out of the car and onto a tree but was again overtaken by floodwaters before emergency workers were able to get to him. “This emergency is not over,” said Chris Minns, the premier of New South Wales. “The rivers are full, the rain is continuing and expected to keep falling in the days ahead, and wind conditions are very high and extreme.” More than 333,000 customers in areas affected by the storm were without power Saturday, according to the electricity company Energex. Emergency responders in New South Wales said they had carried out 30 flood rescues in the previous 24 hours, mostly of people in cars who had tried to drive through inundated streets. Thirteen army personnel were injured when two military vehicles crashed on Saturday near Lismore, a small city about eight hours north of Sydney, according to the Australian Defense Force. Emergency responders said earlier that 36 had been injured in the crash. The officers were in the region to assist residents with the effects of the storm, according to a statement. Matt Keogh, minister for defense personnel and veterans affairs, said in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that there would be an investigation into the crash. Dozens of communities remained under evacuation orders in an area known as the Northern Rivers region, which includes parts of Lismore. The city was inundated in a devastating flood in 2022 that killed 22 people, with waters rising about 47 feet. Forecasters said Saturday afternoon that there was a danger that heavy rainfall would lead to floodwaters overtopping levees in the city. Mr. Minns said officials were aiming for a swift recovery in the storm’s aftermath, naming a point person to coordinate the efforts. In the 2022 floods, the authorities’ response was criticized by residents as inadequate and delayed, leaving people to take rescues and recovery into their own hands.

Eight road construction workers died after becoming trapped under an avalanche in northern India, the Indian Army said on Sunday. Rescuers operating in several feet of snow evacuated 46 other workers. The workers were buried by the snow early on Friday in the village of Mana, in the state of Uttarakhand, as the avalanche hit their camp site. Disaster response teams coordinated the rescue efforts under extreme weather conditions, and the work was halted several times because of incessant snowfall and rain. GPS, sniffer dogs and thermal imaging cameras were used to find the workers. India’s Meteorological Department warned of the possibility of further avalanches in the area, which is known as a gateway for Himalayan mountain trekking. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The rescued workers, many in critical condition, were taken by helicopters to hospitals in neighboring Joshimath. The workers belong to the Border Roads Organization, a division of the Indian armed forces that develops and maintains road networks in India’s border areas. Mana sits at an altitude of 3,200 meters, or more than 10,000 feet, and is about 15 miles from the Tibetan border. During the winter months, the village’s entire population migrates to lower elevations to escape the snowfall. Uttarakhand is prone to avalanches and floods. One of the country’s worst natural disasters took place there in 2013, when flooding killed more than 1,000 people. In 2021, 11 people died when an avalanche hit a Border Roads Organization camp in the district that includes Mana.As the Uttarakhand rescue efforts were completed, an operation to reach eight workers trapped in a tunnel in southern India were still underway, more than a week after the tunnel’s ceiling collapsed. Officials have said that the workers’ chances of survival are very remote.

After a blistering February heat wave in South Sudan’s capital caused dozens of students to collapse from heat stroke, officials closed schools for two weeks. It was the second time in less than a year that the country’s schools closed to protect young people from the deadly effects of extreme heat. Climate change, largely caused by the burning of fossil fuels in rich nations, made at least one week of that heat wave 10 times as likely, and 2 degrees Celsius hotter, according to a new study by World Weather Attribution. Temperatures in some parts of the region soared above 42 degrees Celsius, or 107 degrees Fahrenheit, in the last week of February. The analysis used weather data, observations and climate models to get the results, which have not been peer reviewed but are based on standardized methods. South Sudan, in the tropical band of East Africa, was torn apart by a civil war that led to independence from Sudan in 2011. It’s also one of the countries least responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions that are heating up the globe. “The continent has contributed a tiny fraction of global emissions, but is bearing the brunt of climate change,” said Joyce Kimutai, a researcher at the Center for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Heat waves are one of the deadliest extreme weather events and have become more frequent and more severe on a warming planet. But analysis methods connecting heat to mortality vary between and within countries, and death tolls can be underreported and are often unknown for months after an event. Prolonged heat is particularly dangerous for children, older adults and pregnant women. For the last three weeks, extreme heat has settled over a large region of continental Eastern Africa, including parts of Kenya and Uganda. Residents have been told to stay indoors and drink water, a difficult directive for countries where many people work outdoors, electricity is sporadic, access to clean water is difficult and modest housing means there are few cooling systems. In Juba, South Sudan’s capital and largest city, only 1 percent of the city has green space to help cool residents who cannot get relief at home, according to the study. But there are adaptations that could be made. “Improving ventilation, planting trees and painting schools lighter colors can help reduce temperatures in classrooms, while adapting the school calendar and class schedules can help avoid severe disruptions to education,” said Kiswendsida Guigma, a climate scientist at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center, a research group in Burkina Faso in a news release. South Sudan is particularly vulnerable after years of war and food insecurity. In 2018 a peace deal ended a civil war that killed more than 400,000, but tensions remain within the country and political arrests were reported this week. Editors’ Picks His Life Savings Were Mailed to Him by Paper Check. Now, It’s Gone. Is There a Least Bad Alcohol? Help! How Do I Make Sense of All These Trends? “Climate change is clearly making life even harder in South Sudan, a country already facing economic challenges and periods of instability, where very few children finish primary education,” Dr. Guigma said. As global temperatures continue to rise, similar extreme heat waves in February could occur once every 10 years, according to the study. And if warming doubles by the end of the century, similar heat waves could occur annually. High temperatures are forecast to continue in the region through March.

The last snowfall in New York City is fading from memory. It didn’t amount to much — less than half an inch — and didn’t stick around for long. What did linger was the 28 million pounds of salt that was dumped on the streets that day, causing some people to speculate that there was more salt being spread than usual. Caroline Ourso, a photographer from the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, recalled being hit in the face with windblown salt as she walked on the Upper East Side. “It was gross,” she said. “You’re over-salting!” said Cindy Sbiel, who lives in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn, adding: “The snow is not coming yet! Just chill. When the snow comes, then put down salt.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Ms. Sbiel, 30, said that this winter she had felt that street salt was everywhere — in her 6-year-old daughter’s shoes, inside her first-floor home, in her wig. Ms. Sbiel’s friend, Lily Roth, said she’d noticed the clothes of her 8-year-old and 5-year-old children sprouting splotches of white. “I see the salt on their coats, stained,” Ms. Roth said. “And all over their shoes — it has damaged their shoes.” Despite the splotching and the glazing, the city says it has not changed its approach to salting in recent years. The impression that it has might come from a newish method of preparing the city’s streets for snowfall and a shortage of precipitation to wash the salt away. What is true is that the salty residue has played havoc with thousands of miles of electrical cables buried beneath the pavement, causing dramatic scenes sometimes caught on video.Smoke and flames shoot out of manholes as the briny runoff causes short circuits that briefly knock out power in pockets of the city. “Snow doesn’t cause the problems,” said Patrick McHugh, an executive at the Consolidated Edison utility. “It’s the salting effect and how much the city salts,” he said, describing what happens to the company’s cables when rock salt eats through their outer layers, freeing electrons to run wild underground. For as long as a week after the salt washes off the pavement, Con Edison crews, working 12-hour shifts, must contend with a surge in the number of cables they have to repair or replace, Mr. McHugh said. The tally of those “jobs” can run to several hundred, compared with 25 to 50 in a typical week, he said. In one example, an electrical cable caught fire beneath the street near Prospect Park in Brooklyn on Feb. 21, sending flames bursting through a crosswalk. Power was out for most of the day for some residents of the area while Con Edison replaced the damaged cables, a company spokesman said. That happened a day after the city received a light snowfall and the Department of Sanitation spread those 28 million pounds (or 14,000 tons) of rock salt to melt it. Editors’ Picks His Life Savings Were Mailed to Him by Paper Check. Now, It’s Gone. Is There a Least Bad Alcohol? Help! How Do I Make Sense of All These Trends? Before the flakes started to fall, the department sent out its fleet of trucks that spread brine — salt mixed with water — on the pavement. Brining the streets — that’s the official terminology — is a relatively new practice in the city. A few years ago, the Sanitation Department started pouring the mixture onto the busiest streets if they were dry in the hours before snow was forecast, said Joshua Goodman, a spokesman for the department. Once the flakes start to fly, the city begins to lay down dry salt. The brine causes snow to melt as soon as it lands, Mr. Goodman said. It also remains on the pavement, visible as a white sheen, until snow or rain washes it off, he said. But if there are no flakes or drops, the brine sticks around. The department did not apply brine in anticipation of a Jan. 22 snowfall because the brine it had applied the previous week had not washed away, he said.

A severe storm was moving east across the central and southern United States on Wednesday, a day after it carved a destructive path that killed three people in Mississippi and two in Nebraska, pulled down power lines and ripped roofs off buildings. One of the people who died was electrocuted by a downed power line, said Alex Breeland, the coroner for Madison County, Miss., and another was killed when a tree fell on his car. The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency reported a third death and at least six injuries on Wednesday. In Nebraska, two people were killed in a crash on Tuesday after their S.U.V. struck a semi truck on Interstate 80 during the storm, according to the Nebraska State Patrol. More than 51,000 customers in Texas and more than 17,000 in Tennessee were without power on Wednesday afternoon, according to poweroutage.us, as the storm’s strong winds pummeled the region. The authorities in some parts of Texas closed schools and ordered residents to evacuate. The storm, unusually strong for March, was expected to strengthen as it moved east, bringing rain and thunderstorms to the East Coast. In parts of Minnesota 11 to 13 inches of snow fell between Tuesday and Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service in Minneapolis. The Minnesota State Patrol warned of slippery roads in the Twin Cities area on Wednesday. In Iowa, the State Patrol said it responded to more than 60 crashes on Tuesday and Wednesday, including one that damaged a trooper’s car, because of “the extreme weather conditions.” Areas from the Mid-Atlantic to Jacksonville, Fla., were the most at risk, with strong to severe thunderstorms expected ahead of a cold front, the Weather Service said on Wednesday. The strongest storms were expected over the eastern Carolinas and southeastern Virginia, including Norfolk and Virginia Beach. The Storm Prediction Center issued an enhanced risk for these regions, warning of severe thunderstorms that could produce damaging wind gusts and isolated tornadoes through Wednesday evening. Some shoreline areas in the Northeast are facing coastal flood advisories, according to the Weather Service. Up to six inches of rain were expected through Wednesday night in some low-lying areas along the South Shore of Long Island, the Connecticut shore and on Cape Cod.Blizzard conditions were forecast from north of Kansas City, Mo., to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan through Wednesday night. One person was injured and 24 families displaced when a tornado hit parts of Ada, Okla., on Tuesday morning, KOCO-TV of Oklahoma City reported, citing local officials. A mobile home was also destroyed, KOCO said. In Texas, a brief tornado carved a destructive path through Irving, northwest of Dallas early Tuesday, with winds estimated at up to 110 miles per hour. By Tuesday afternoon, a dust storm had caused the skies in Central Texas to turn dark orange. Local news outlets referred to it as a “haboob,” which the Weather Service describes as an extreme dust storm that can last up to three hours.

Extreme winds and possible storms expected on Tuesday have forced the cancellation of Mardi Gras parades in Jefferson Parish, La., as officials in neighboring New Orleans moved up parade starting times because of the forecast. The National Weather Service is warning that strong winds, with gusts reaching up to 60 miles per hour, will begin early in the morning, creating potentially hazardous conditions for parade floats and spectators. “I’m going to cut to the chase with very disappointing news,” the Jefferson Parish president, Cynthia Lee Sheng, said at a news conference on Monday. “Tomorrow’s weather, especially the gusty winds, is severe enough that we have no other choice other than to cancel our scheduled parades for tomorrow.” There are two parades in Jefferson Parish on Mardi Gras. The Krewe of Argus was scheduled to roll with 20 floats through Metairie, La., followed by the Krewe of Elks Jeffersonians with 43 floats. Collin Arnold, the director of New Orleans Homeland Security, told New Orleans’s Fox affiliate that strong winds could create a public safety hazard for the floats, riders and spectators in the early part of the day, with the potential for tornadoes and thunderstorms later in the afternoon. The New Orleans Police Department said on social media that it was adjusting the starting times of its Zulu and Rex parades, with Zulu set to begin earlier at 7 a.m., and Rex starting around 9 a.m. Both would be slightly pared down, with “no additional elements,” officials said. Ms. Sheng, the Jefferson Parish president, noted that, historically, transit buses stop operating when wind gusts exceed 35 m.p.h., and Entergy, the region’s public utility, forbids workers from going up in bucket trucks unless the winds are blowing at 30 m.p.h. or less. Because the strong winds are expected so early in the morning, Ms. Sheng said, it was not practical for officials to consider an earlier parade start time. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “Let me state the obvious: These are not conditions where we would invite families, including the elderly and children, to stand on our streets out in the open,” she said. “These are not conditions for people to be elevated on floats.” “We have kids on ladders, we have maids with beautiful head pieces,” she added. Ms. Sheng said it would be up to the parade organizers to decide whether to reschedule the parades for a later date.The cancellation of the Jefferson Parish parades came as a powerful weather system was moving east from New Mexico and Texas, bringing severe conditions as early as Monday evening to parts of southeast Kansas, Oklahoma and North Texas. Meteorologists predict that strengthening winds and an influx of warm, moist air from the Gulf will create favorable conditions for severe weather. By Tuesday afternoon and evening, conditions in the region will be ripe for severe storms, especially in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi. Forecasters have warned of damaging gusts, hail and possible tornadoes from eastern Oklahoma through Alabama. The Storm Prediction Center has issued an enhanced risk, a level three out of five, for severe weather across these areas, warning of damaging wind gusts, tornadoes and large hail.