After more than two inches of rainfall over a 48-hour period, South Carolina Forestry Commission officials say the Hornet Fire remains about 70 percent contained, having consumed 1,374 acres of woods near the Carolina Forest community.
The rain has not been enough to consider the fire fully controlled, but it has helped.
"Right now it's bought us a few days, the fire is very cool right now. (The fire) does have a lot of hot spots still, though," said incident commander Doug Mills.
The soil in the area around the fire contains so much organic matter that is still flammable, it would take a tropical storm system, "without the wind, hopefully", to extinguish the fire completely, Mills said.
"It would take a sustained couple of days of rain, good steady rain, to soak in, get into the dirt, into the soil and put the fire out."
A day-and-a-half of rainfall has created new challenges for the 9 forestry crews that continue to battle the fire. Now, the problem is mud.
"Earlier this week, it was the dust. Now it's gone to the other extreme," Mills said. "Some of the area is inaccessible to our equipment right now."
If the favorable weather continues, forestry might finally be able to pull some of its crews off the fire some three weeks after it began, said forestry spokesman Scott Hawkins.
"All these guys want to go home. They've been away from their families for awhile. Some of them have cycled out and fresh crews have come, but everybody here today has been here several days and they're tired."
While the rain is a welcome relief to forestry crews, farmers and golf course supervisors who have been hit hard by a lingering drought, at least a few Grand Strand businesses do not look kindly on the rain.
"It's lost revenue, first of all, and then of course we still have constant payroll that we have here also," said Mark Lazarus, whose family owns Wild Water and Wheels water park in Surfside Beach.
The water park closed for the day Tuesday, the first full day of rainout so far this season.
Lazarus said he doesn't like a drought any more than anyone else, but he'd prefer to see the drought-busting rainfall happen after midnight.
Still, Lazarus said business has been fairly strong this summer and the water park should recover at least some of the business that was lost due to the one-day closure over the next couple of days.
"I think everybody's been cooped up and you can only go to the mall about so much, so they'll be looking for some outdoor activities when the sun comes back out."
