The air is dry and the winds are strong Tuesday over a large portion of the central and southern United States. The vegetation is bone dry, and the U.S. Drought Monitor says the region is in “exceptional” drought. All of this is stoking wildfires that ignited late last week and increasing the chances of new fires.

“A particularly dangerous situation is expected to develop with extreme fire weather and very dry fuels [trees, shrubs and grass] across western Oklahoma and parts of northern Oklahoma on April 17,” the National Weather Service wrote Tuesday.

The Weather Service issued an “extremely critical” fire weather outlook for a giant swath of the South that covers parts of Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. “Extremely critical” is as bad as it gets, and it’s the second time the Weather Service has had to use the term in the past week.