Firefighters trying to contain Nevada wildfires before more lightning

"It looks like it's pretty quiet. Folks are kind of waiting for the thunderstorms to move through the area. That's supposed to be tonight and tomorrow," Bureau of Land Management spokesman Jason Abraham said.

"We just try to get ahead of the lightning and be positioned," he said.

Since last Wednesday, lightning has sparked more than 100 fires across north central and northeastern Nevada, burning nearly 1,800 square miles of land or an area about 1 1/2 times the size of Rhode Island.

By midday Monday all were contained or nearly contained, including a massive complex of 20 fires that had covered 361,658 acres of land on either side of Interstate-80 southwest of Winnemucca.

More stubborn fires included a 180,000-acre fire south of Elko, a 159,889-acre blaze near Battle Mountain, a 53,000-acre fire northeast of Austin and a 74,900-acre fire east of Fallon.

All of the fires were burning in remote areas along a 200-mile stretch of I-80 and posed no immediate threat to structures.

Flames moved away from scattered ranches near Elko and Austin. On Friday, fires burned three homes and six ranch structures, and killed 100 head of livestock near Elko.

Fire spokesman Nick Zufelt said more than 4,000 firefighters won't be released until Wednesday at the earliest because of the weather threat.

"Most of the fires are pretty well in hand now, but there's concern we could get back into the same ball game again with more thunderstorms," he said.

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