News

The Canadian River Music Festival has been postponed until May of 2022. In a statement released by the CRMF board on Wednesday, the organization confirmed they will not host the annual event again this year, as a result of the ongoing fallout from COVID-19.

Barely six weeks have passed since residents moved into the newly-completed Mesa View Senior Living facility. During the Hemphill County Hospital Board’s Feb. 16 meeting, MVSL Director Terrell Thomas shared the positive feedback he has received, noting that the residents were especially pleased with the dining experience.

Gov. Greg Abbott celebrated Texas Independence Day by announcing that Texans will no longer be required to wear face masks in public, and all businesses can re-open at full capacity starting next week. The governor chose a crowded restaurant in Lubbock as the venue for his announcement, and spoke to a mostly maskless and cheering audience, according a report in the Dallas Morning News.

Today (Thursday) is expected to bring critical fire danger to the southwestern Texas Panhandle with elevated danger elsewhere in the western half of the Panhandles. Amarillo’s National Weather Service meteorologists reported yesterday that they were highly confident that elevated to critical fire danger would develop in the western Oklahoma and Texas Panhandles this afternoon. Winds out of the southwest, ranging from 20-30 mph, with gusts up to 40 mph, are anticipated.

Everett Cook was 2 years old when he first visited the ocean. His mother has a photo of him dipping his toe in the water.

Two hundred seventy-five hours—11 1/2 days—from Monday, Feb. 8 at 1:30 am until Friday, Feb. 19 at 1:15 pm, the mercury stubbornly refused to budge above the freezing mark. Arctic air blanketed a large part of North America as two storms interacted, producing record-shattering low temperatures, wind-chill readings not seen in a generation, and snow.

New positive tests for the coronavirus continued to dramatically decline in Hemphill County this week. On Wednesday, the Hemphill County Hospital District lab announced zero new positive cases of COVID-19 among in-county residents over the last seven days. Only one case remains active among Hemphill county residents, according to this latest report.

Canadian ISD board members met last Wednesday in the midst of an epic winter storm that closed school here for two days and caused a power grid blackout that shut down some parts of Texas for most of the week.