MORGAN, Utah (KUTV) — The Rocky Canyon Fire is now burning in two northern Utah counties: Morgan and Summit.

Attack teams said extreme heat and high winds hindered firefighting efforts Saturday, and they urged nearby communities to remain on high alert overnight. So far, only one campground has been evacuated, with Hogback Summit in “ready status.”

While an official cause has not been released, a community meeting revealed that a crash is suspected of starting the blaze Friday. Fire crews are in for another long night.

“That’s our Black Hawk. That’s a National Guard spacecraft right there,” said Kelly Wickens, spokeswoman with Forestry, Fire and State Lands.

MORE | Rocky Canyon Fire

The fire started small Friday and grew to about 600 acres by sunrise. Triple-digit heat and strong winds turned the Rocky Canyon firefight on its head.

“With fire, we’re always fighting the elements, and this time, they won,” Wickens said.

Crews threw everything they had at the fire from the air and on the ground despite the steep, rugged terrain.

“Last night, the fire tried to cross 66 in several places. We were able to hold the line on 66 in the north progression into Morgan. That was our priority, to make sure the fire did not get into town,” said Brad Wilkes, Morgan County fire chief.

Closures and evacuations

Law enforcement has Highway 66 closed from Porterville to East Canyon Dam and from the dam to mile marker 22 on state Route 65.

East Canyon State Park and the reservoir are closed. Dixie Campground has been evacuated.

In Morgan City, just a few miles away, families are watching the ridgeline.

“We’ve been a little bit worried. We’re up next against the mountain,” said Dakota Hyde, a Morgan City resident.

Crews said the fire is about 1,200 acres — and probably larger — and that the weather moving in could change everything, with lightning and 50 mph winds in the forecast. Around 10 p.m., Utah Fire Info mapped the fire at 2,000-plus acres with zero percent containment.

“You could see smoke and flames for two to three weeks,” Wilkes said.

Fire officials said a Type 3 incident management team will take over in the morning. In the meantime, they are asking families in Hogback Summit to keep a “ready bag” by the door with medications, pet supplies and important paperwork, just in case.

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A large Utah wildfire kept emergency responders from safely reaching the remote site of a helicopter crash on Saturday as other fires burned across several Western states, including one that closed part of Mount Rainier National Park.

The Friday morning crash of a Sikorsky Skycrane helicopter in Utah’s Fishlake National Forest ignited a new fire that spread to connect with the existing blaze that has now scorched nearly 174 square miles (nearly 451 square kilometers).

Officials battling the fire said Saturday afternoon that they decided not to place additional lives at risk until the fire is more under control, so they have not been able to confirm the status of the two people aboard the helicopter. The National Interagency Fire Center said the pilot and crewmember were fatally injured in the crash, but they didn’t respond immediately to questions about the source of that information.

“The site is now inside the fire perimeter itself,” the fire incident management team said Saturday afternoon.

The National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the helicopter crash once their team can examine the wreckage. Officials urged the public not to speculate or spread rumors about the cause at this early stage. It will likely take the NTSB a year or more to determine that.

In Washington state, the National Park Service closed down access to the Sunrise and White River areas of Mount Rainier National Park after a new wildfire burned less than a third of a square mile (less than a square kilometer). Firefighters were working to gain control of that fire on Saturday.

The larger fires near Spokane have now burned more than 15.63 square miles (over 40 square kilometers), but firefighters have constructed more than 75 miles (over 120 kilometers) of containment line to help control those flames.

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah’s wildfires are nearing an undesired feat only seen once before in modern history, but there’s hope that another round of monsoons can help quell the state’s fire danger.

More than 497,100 acres have now burned across Utah this year, the second most on record. The record is 629,212 acres in 2007, the only time Utah’s fires burned at least 500,000 acres, according to the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands.

Utah’s recent acreage surge is mostly tied to the massive growth of the Widemouth 2 Fire, which became the second Utah fire to surpass the 100,000-acre mark this year. It has now burned 106,450 acres after starting in Millard County last month, U.S. Forest Service officials said on Friday.

Despite its growth, firefighters were able to gain more control of the fire, increasing containment from 10% on Thursday to 24% on Friday. However, a few other smaller fires have popped up over the past week, adding to the surge as hot and dry conditions have helped spread fires.

Nearly a quarter of the state’s acreage burned this year has come within the past 10 days, after the first round of monsoon moisture ended.

“Everything that is available to catch fire is catching fire. It’s very explosive,” said Tony DeMasters, incident commender for Great Basin Team 2, which is currently overseeing the massive Widemouth 2 Fire, on Thursday.

Approximately 28,700 firefighting personnel are currently assigned to fires raging across the U.S., limiting the number of resources that are available for current or new starts. The Great Basin region jumped to preparedness Level 5, the highest level, on Thursday because of the renewed threat of fires mixing in with the number of resources committed to other fires.

Monsoonal return

However, weather models suggest monsoonal moisture will soon return to Utah, which may help slow down activity.

A strong high-pressure system remained over Utah on Friday, helping keep conditions hot and dry, prompting the National Weather Service to issue more extreme heat warnings, heat advisories and red flag warnings tied to heat and fire danger.

Those will linger toward the first half of the weekend, but the high-pressure system is forecast to zig-zag around the Four Corners region beginning at the end of it and the start of next week, opening the door for oceanic moisture to flow back into Utah, said KSL meteorologist Devan Masciulli.

The threats of microbursts and dry lightning are possible this weekend, she cautions, but the probability of rain-producing storms and thunderstorms developing will increase during the workweek as the high-pressure system moves east.

Most of this will likely stick to mountain areas first, with models hinting that there might not be enough upper-level steering winds to push storms into the valleys.

“Each day, this will still promote moisture in the atmosphere to keep daily thunderstorm chances,” she said.

Weather models, she added, indicate some low-pressure systems will try to form near the Pacific Ocean toward the middle- to-late end of next week, pushing the high-pressure system further east. That could help promote more widespread rain probabilities that could develop in valley communities, especially in southern and central Utah.

It’s unclear how far north these will go. Some models hint that the storms may only reach parts of the Wasatch Front. That’s something that will likely become clearer in the coming days, as models gain more certainty.

It’s also unclear how long the pattern will last or how much it will produce.

“Wonky” signals are showing up in some models, suggesting storms remaining in the forecast through at least Friday, but drier conditions could return next weekend, Masciulli said. Yet, many long-range models still list Utah as having above-normal precipitation probabilities through the middle and end of the month, indicating that any slowdown might be short-lived.

Precipitation amounts are notoriously difficult to predict, depending heavily on where storms form and how much rain is produced when they form. Panguitch Lake received more than 7 inches of rain from monsoonal storms last month, while the Uinta Basin struggled to receive moisture from the last wave of monsoons, which ended toward the end of July.

Utah’s statewide mountain and valley moisture levels ended the month at above-normal, with some regions faring better than others, federal hydrologists noted. Higher soil moisture levels can help reduce evaporative loss and fire risk, and improve snowpack efficiency during the following spring.

That’s the upside, but storms can also produce flash flooding at new or recent fire burn scars, which was also the case last month. Communities close to the Widemouth 2 Fire said on Thursday they are now preparing for that threat, given the forecast.

“Mother Nature doesn’t care about our time frames. We can be fighting a fire one minute and then fighting a flood the next minute,” Gov. Spencer Cox said. “We have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.”

Full seven-day forecasts for areas across Utah can be found online at the KSL Weather Center.