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Cooler weather aids big wildfire fight in New Mexico

(Robert Browman//The Albuquerque Journal via AP)

Cooler weather is helping nearly 3,000 firefighters in New Mexico prevent the nation’s largest active wildfire from growing.

Fire officials said Monday night that they took advantage of better conditions to expand contingency firebreaks northeast of Santa Fe ahead of a return to hotter, windier weather by the end of the week.

The blaze started as two fires and burned into one large conflagration now larger than the city of Los Angeles.

A rural sheriff warned at a community briefing Monday night that “just because we’ve had a few good days of weather... it doesn’t mean we are out of the woods yet.”