Fire crews spent another day chasing down the effects of Sunday morning's lightning storms. Smoke in the Rogue Valley sky thickened as some of the fires made a typical late-afternoon growth spurt Tuesday.
The Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest gave an idea of just how much firefighting has been going on: the Medford Air Tanker Base has dropped 230,000 gallons of retardant on fires between northern California and the Umpqua National Forest since the Sunday storms.
The Hendrix Fire, 400 acres in size as of Tuesday evening, is among the largest of the active fires. Many measure a dozen acres or fewer. Some have been handled by smokejumpers. None present a threat to homes.
Lightning stayed away again on Tuesday, and the chance of thunderstorms will be even less as the week goes on, according to the National Weather Service. But daytime high temperatures will stay in triple digits; Medford's high is not forecast for under 100 until Friday.
