The lightning-sparked Hill Fire in Humboldt County, California had grown to 4,472 acres on Friday, up about 400 acres since Thursday.
The fire ignited Tuesday, and was most active on the day it started. It is burning in the Mosquito Creek drainage in the Six Rivers National Forest, west of the South Fork Trinity River, east of Janes Place, and south of the community of Willow Creek.
Firefighters reported no containment on Friday. But the west side of fire has not spread over the past 24 hours. It has stopped there at the top of a ridge thanks to a successful firing operation, a firefighting tool that involves cutting away vegetation to make a line of bare soil ahead of a fire, and then burning the vegetation between that line and the actively burning fire front.
There was also very little spread in the past 24 hours on the north end of the fire, where it has run into the scar of a series of lightning-sparked fires that burned in 2022.
The majority of the fire activity over the past 24 hours has been on the south flank of the fire.
While fire officials have warned that the fire could spread into the community of Salyer, it’s unlikely the fire will reach that far under current weather conditions.
For more in-depth analysis of the Hill Fire, including the latest mapping, check out today’s livestream: