Youth camp destroyed by Palo Pinto County fire

A massive wildfire in Palo Pinto and Jack counties has grown to 50,000 acres and is nowhere near containment. Hello everybody. I'm heather Hayes. I'm steve eager. It's nine o'clock. The texas A and M forest services fire activity remains high winds are still shifting and the fire has been growing and moving rapidly. Some people living near the fire were advised to evacuate earlier today and sky four has spotted some structures burning or some already burned down. Fox was Peyton Yeager reports from Palo Pinto County. New Sky four images Tuesday afternoon of the raging Ross wildfire rapidly growing across Palo Pinto County. Now into Jack County, plumes of smoke in the yellow orange sky, tens of thousands of acres of scorched landscape left behind as the wildfire presses north. This trail camera showing the wind whipped fire fast growing monday night, dry and windy conditions continued to fuel the flames on Tuesday structures in the danger zone, hundreds on high alert, many evacuating also Tuesday trailers heading in and out of threatened ranch land to grab animals forced for the choice of moving them or trying to feed them where they're at. What regal out trying to stop the fire on his property near Possum Kingdom Lake with just a shovel and his own strength. I mean, this is utter devastation, especially to a community this small here off of Highway 2 54. As those winds fluctuate, this is what firefighters are up against intense flames, ashes coming from the sky smoke surrounding us. And this is what first responders are gonna be up against Tuesday night and also headed into Wednesday as well. You can see those flames also going in to those power lines as well. And we have seen countless power crews out here in Palo Pinto County. We haven't had access. We haven't been able to get on the property worth Ranch, a youth scout camp owned by Scouting America's Longhorn Council. First seeing destruction from our aerial views. What we saw was was absolutely catastrophic. These are ground photos of the charred camp. It's faced scares before, but this time buildings burned and leveled. No scouts or campers were on property and all personnel on site were safely evacuated starting over just a few years shy of their 100 year anniversary in Palo Pinto County. Peyton Yeager Fox four news. All right, so we want to give you another look at the fire. Our Fox four weather team has been monitoring it and posting updates on their social media. Wind is, of course, the big problem here, right? And the heat and how dry everything is. And Fox four chief meteorologist in Henry and now with more on this and also our forecast because really are high temperatures and the lack of rain and the wind. All of those things just make it more challenging. Yeah, it's really been unfortunately the perfect mix for a fire like this to get started and then to spread as quickly as it did. In fact, that fire has spread about 25 miles north from where it originally started. You can see the fire perimeter area there that extends all the way up through northern Palo Pinto County across the county line into southern Jack County. And we can still clearly at this hour see the smoke and ash plume on Doppler radar across much of northern Palo Pinto and southern Jack County. But that's just the thick smoke. We've actually seen smoke that's been blowing east as well, especially into Tarrant County, where it has been blotting out the sun at sunset this evening. There is a look at current winds in wind directions and they have been erratic around this fire. This fire keep in mind is so large, it's putting out so much heat that it can literally generate its own weather right now. The prevailing winds are still out of the south, but they're likely going to shift to the west early tomorrow morning and then to the northwest behind a weak front. And that certainly could complicate matters. We've had these very spotty showers that have been moving from northwest to southeast across the area. I do think we're going to see our chances of showers and storms going up late tonight and tomorrow is that weak front and a disturbance make their way in from the northwest. So it's not all bad news.