The Valley fire tore through a half dozen homes in the residential community of Hidden Valley Lakes, near Middletown, Calif.
(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)
A long day of smoke, (click here) fire and ashes drew to a close Sunday in Lake and Napa counties, with exhausted firefighters struggling to make headway against a blaze that has consumed hundreds of homes and other structures.
As the sun set, the blaze, called the Valley fire, was not yet contained in any area, although officials were hopeful of making headway Monday and avoiding a repeat of the massive destruction of the weekend. At the very least, they said, the fire has slowed its spread.
Officials also said Sunday that their rough estimate, of hundreds of lost structures, could easily climb higher. It may be two more days before evacuees can safety return to their homes, or what is left of them....
East of the Rockies, abnormally warm weather prevailed again, and rainfall was sparse outside of the Great Lakes Region, The Midwest, Florida, and the South Atlantic and Gulf Coasts. Dryness and drought eased in some of the limited regions receiving moderate to locally heavy rain, but persistence or intensification was much more common.
Significant
changes were made in areas where the warm, dry pattern has persisted for
multiple weeks. D0 was broadly expanded in a broken pattern across the
mid-Atlantic, The Northeast, and The Ohio Valley while widespread
intensification occurred in most areas of dryness and drought from
eastern Texas to western Mississippi.
