California Wildfire News Updates: Cooler Weather Aids, Damage Spans Over 134K Acres

Cooler weather has aided crews in building a buffer between the Northern California wildfire and the thousands of home it threatened to damage.

Yahoo! News reported from The Associated Press that the blaze called Rocky Fire crossed Lake County, latching itself onto drought-withered brush that hasn't burned in many years. Yesterday, the blaze jumped a state highway north of Highway 20 near Clearlake City. Firefighters hoped the highway would serve a containment line for the flames.

"There were too many (spot fires) for us to pick up," Battalion Chief Carl Schwettmann of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) said after the struggle on Highway 20, as reported by Yahoo! News. "With these drought-stricken fuels, it's just moving at an extremely high rate of speed."

At least two dozen homes were ravaged by the fire over the last few days, with 13,000 residents forced to evacuate, Yahoo! News noted. The Rocky Fire blew up last week in the canyons and foothills along the internal flanks of California's North Coast Ranges, RTE reported.

The Rocky Fire is the largest ongoing blaze, one of nearly two dozen wildfires that have smoldered more than 134,000 acres of drought-stricken California this year, CNN wrote. The Rocky Fire, which is 12% contained, is ravaging Lake, Yolo, and Colusa located northwest of Sacramento.

"This has been a very fast-moving wildfire, with the dry conditions and the weather not really cooperating with us over the past week," Cal Fire spokesman Daniel Berlant told CNN affiliate KCRA.

Over the weekend, the Rocky Fire tripled in size to almost 97 square miles, Yahoo! News added. More than 2,900 firefighters, 285 engines, four air tankers, and 19 helicopters are currently responding, Cal Fire said, as reported by CNN.

Cal Fire's Capt. Don Camp said that lower temperatures and higher humidity helped them in containing most of the fire. As reported by Yahoo! News, he added, "We are hoping we only have to deal with winds from the weather instead of the fire creating its own winds."

Firefighters in the Lower Lake area did controlled burns, which is setting fire to shrubs to take fuel from the greater blaze and prevent it from reaching the homes in danger, the news outlet noted.

The Rocky Fire isn't labeled as one of California's top 20 deadliest fires, but Berlant said that the blaze is unique because of how fast it burned, raging through 20,000 acres in just five hours, CNN added.

Cal Fire said that majority of the California wildfire are more than 60% contained, but damage has been significant in some areas, including Southern California's San Bernardino County and Northern California's Alpine County, CNN wrote.