Lightning Lights Up Delta Junction, Then the Rain Comes

A single day of lightning lit up the country around Delta Junction — 7,400 strikes and at least 11 new fires — and one of them, the Shaw Fire, showed how fast the summer's dry fuels can move: it grew nearly 1,900 acres in four hours Monday evening before Tuesday's rain slowed it down.

That rain bought the region a pause, not a reprieve. Crews across the Delta complex spent Tuesday watching fires that a day earlier were running hard. The Shaw Fire, now near 2,500 acres, has shifted from active suppression to monitoring. The Pogo and Granite fires are largely in hand, and the Moosehead Fire — between Moosehead and George lakes — was declared out after heavy rain.

Two of the fires are interesting less for their size than for what's complicating them. The Buffalo Fire, burning in the Donnelly Training Area, can't be touched on the ground at all: it sits inside a military impact zone laced with unexploded ordnance, so crews are limited to watching it from the air. It's being allowed to burn its natural course, with no communities or valued sites in its path. The Rapeseed Fire, near the headwaters of the Clearwater River, raises the opposite concern — crews are working it carefully with a tracked Nodwell vehicle to avoid tearing up terrain that feeds salmon and grayling habitat.

For now the weather is the wildcard. Tuesday's rain calmed things across the Delta area, but managers warn that warm, dry conditions later in the week could wake the fires back up.