A major wind shift on the Kenai Peninsula was expected to give firefighters a shot at a “strategic burn” Tuesday to keep the still-growing Swan Lake wildfire off the Sterling Highway. The fire grew by about 5,000 acres to 37,354 acres by Tuesday morning and generated a pyrocumulus cloud that rose 30,000 feet into the sky, according to fire officials. But a wind shift -- blowing out of the south instead of out of the north -- kept the blaze about two miles from the only road that runs from the north end of the Peninsula south to Homer.
“It’s gonna take the fire another day or so to progress toward the highway,” public information officer Kale Casey said in a video update Tuesday morning. Fire managers hope to stop the fire north of a Homer Electric Association transmission line near the highway by burning a buffer that gives the flames less fuel to consume.