BLAZES FORCE EVACUATIONS IN ARIZ., CALIF.

The Western U.S. on Monday marked another day of hot, dry and windy weather as crews from California to New Mexico battled wildfires that had forced hundreds of people to leave their homes.

Roughly 2,500 homes have been evacuated because of two wildfires burning on the outskirts of Flagstaff in northern Arizona, officials said at an afternoon briefing.

“We all have felt the pain of watching our beautiful mountain burn. We acknowledged what an incredibly difficult time this is for those who have been evacuated and for those whose homes have been threatened,” Coconino County Board of Supervisors Chair Patrice Horstman said.

The wildfire prompted the county to declare an emergency. It’s been fueled by high winds that have grounded aircraft as an option for firefighting. Crews are planning on being able to use aircraft today as winds moderate, authorities said.

Incident commander Aaron Graeser said the Flagstaff-area fire is one of the country’s top priorities for firefighting resources.

“Every potential fire source was a problem today, and every potential unburned area was receptive to fire today,” Graeser said. “That puts us in an interesting situation of trying to, again, assign resources the best we can based on that.”

Conditions have also kept fire managers from being able to better map it by air but the fire is estimated to be 5,120 acres.

Two smaller wildfires northeast of the blaze were also burning Monday.

Wildfires broke out early this spring in multiple states in the Western U.S., where climate change and an enduring drought are fanning the frequency and intensity of forest and grassland fires.

Nationally, more than 6,200 wildland firefighters were battling nearly three dozen uncontained fires that had charred over 1 million acres, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

In California, evacuations were ordered for about 300 remote homes near a wildfire that flared up over the weekend in forest land northeast of Los Angeles near the Pacific Crest Trail in the San Gabriel Mountains.

The blaze saw renewed growth Sunday afternoon and by midday Monday had scorched about 960 acres of pine trees and dry brush, fire spokesperson Dana Dierkes said.

“The fuel is very dry, so it acts like a ladder, carrying flames from the bottom of the trees to the very top,” Dierkes said. Crews were also contending with unpredictable winds, she said.

Aside from mandatory evacuations for some, the remainder of the mountain town of Wrightwood, with about 4,500 residents, was under an evacuation warning. Several roads also were closed.

The fire was 18 percent contained.