Michael Gisick/Tribune

Joshua Lonjose, a member of the Zuni 3 firefighting crew from Zuni Pueblo, puts out a campfire used to stay warm while mopping up the Ojo Peak Fire. Firefighters on Thursday said they weren't used to working in such cold temperatures, which dipped into the 20s as a cold front hit the Manzano Mountains.

Michael Gisick/Tribune

The 7,500-acre Ojo Peak Fire left many ponderosa pines in the Manzano Mountains relatively unharmed, but wind-whipped flames in other areas torched trees from bottom to top. On Thursday, this section of the forest near the heart of the fire was deadly still.

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NEAR MANZANO PEAK — As firefighters from Zuni Pueblo prodded the smoldering forest floor deep in the Manzano Mountains, flames leapt from a small collection of logs nearby.

The crew members weren't fighting that fire. It was keeping them warm.

For the 150 or so firefighters battling a blaze that roared across more than 7,000 acres of the Manzanos in a wind-driven fury Wednesday, the weather was up to a different trick on Thanksgiving Day — a much less familiar trick to those who spend their summers fighting forest fires across the West.

The temperature Thursday hovered just below 30 degrees at ground zero of the Ojo Peak Fire, an area a mile south of the cloud-draped, 10,098-foot summit of Manzano Peak. Winter, as delayed as a holiday traveler, seemed finally to have arrived.

It was welcome, though it had not been the only thing running late this year.

"We were out fighting a fire last month, and everyone was saying how weird it was to be fighting fires in October in New Mexico," said Andy Bundshuh, a National Park Service firefighter who is the deputy incident commander in the Manzanos.

"Now here it is, Thanksgiving, almost the end of November, and we're out again," he said.

Although the clouds grounded the air tankers that had strafed the mountain with fire retardant Wednesday, the increased humidity and still, cold air were an even greater ally, the firefighters said. Snow that seemed increasingly likely as the day wore on would be even better.

And indeed, the snow arrived. Several inches of snow fell overnight in Mountainair, with even more in the fire zone, U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Dana Howlett said today.

By the end of the day, officials had hoped to have the fire 25 percent contained, but the progress turned out better than expected. Howlett said the fire is now 40 percent contained.

But as this fire had already proven — destroying three houses and forcing as many as 100 families from their homes during its rampage in the dark, fearsome hours of Wednesday morning — weather can change quickly. Bundshuh was not ready to say a corner has been turned against the blaze.

"It's looking up," he said. "But are we out of the woods yet? By no means."

The families who were told to leave their homes Wednesday had not been allowed back Thursday, and officials said it might be today or later before they could return.

Torrance County officials were working to determine exactly how many families had evacuated the rural area, but estimates ran between 80 and 100. The fire had destroyed seven structures including three homes, officials said.

Crews along the eastern flank of the fire were still focused on protecting structures Thursday, but officials said no more homes were immediately threatened.

Bundshuh said his instincts told him it would be at least three or four days and maybe as long as a week before the 7,500-acre fire was fully contained, but that would depend largely on the weather.

A Thanksgiving Day drive through the heart of the fire's path revealed much that a forest ranger would appreciate — though not so much by those living on the forest's edges.

The fire had burned the undergrowth down to a blackened mulch but left the ponderosa pines green and, apparently, alive. Bundshuh estimated tree mortality in many areas would run as low as 2 percent.

"This was a good fire from the standpoint of the forest's health," he said.

Other areas were not as fortunate. Along a dirt road where the fire had raced in its northeastward course, the cold forest was funereal, the tall pines as gray as cinders from base to crown.

The clouds hung low, masking whatever remained of the fire's menace. Whereas a day earlier the massive plume of smoke had stood out against the blue sky like an unnatural weather system, Thursday the smoke and the clouds were inseparable.

At the fire's margin, the men from Zuni Pueblo — Zuni 3, the crew was called — were in mop-up mode. They hacked at tree roots that might carry the fire underground. They took breaks by their campfire.

Their crew boss, Henderson Soseeah, made sure they drank enough water, since dehydration can sneak up in the cold.

Compared to the fires in Idaho and California that he and other members of Zuni 3 fought earlier in the year — fires that sprawled to 50,000 or 100,000 acres — the Ojo Peak Fire has been a modest affair, an epilogue to a long season.

Still, his men, who earn between $13 and $17 an hour, were glad for the work.

Joshua Lonjose, a 22-year-old who said he was working his 12th fire of the season, had expected to be home with his three children for the holiday, but that could wait for Christmas.

"I don't mind being out here," he said. "It keeps you busy. It gives you something to have on your mind."