As of Tuesday evening the Funny River fire, located within the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska has burned through almost 200,000 acres of land since it was ignited well over two weeks ago and fire officials are still having a hard time containing the blaze.

The most recent update from InciWeb, posted in the evening hours of Tuesday June 4, shows that the Funny River fire has destroyed 193,597 acres -- or 302.9 square miles -- of land. According to a representative of the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center this fire is the largest one ever recorded in the Kenai Peninsula.

The blaze, which was first reported on Monday, May 19 at approximately 7:00 p.m. is believed to be human-caused, officials say. According to a report from the Anchorage Daily News, fire investigators announced last week that they believe a person or persons were responsible for igniting the inferno but it's still unclear what the exact cause was.

The official investigation into the fire has so far determined that it started west of Woodcut Road and just south of Funny River Road in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, near an old gas exploration road.

Doug Newbould, fire management officer for the wildlife refuge told reporters that it's still too early to speculate on the exact cause of the fire. He noted, however, that fire officials reportedly found "some evidence" on site that led them to eliminate the possibility that a campfire ignited the flames.

"[Investigators] can definitely say it wasn't a campfire, but they can't say exactly what caused the fire yet," Newbould said.

A total of 555 firefighting personnel are assigned to tend to the fire under Incident Commander Rob Allen. Fueling the blaze is timber including black spruce, mixed hardwoods and spruce, old Beetle kill and grass.

According to officials a note of significance is that fire behavior is now seemingly limited to "isolated smoldering in very sheltered fuels." However, in some areas within the perimeter of the vast wildfire a plan for structure protection is still needed and currently in place at numerous locations.

The official projected fire activity through Wednesday is of a warming and drying trend. A forecasted wind direction and drying trend create a risk for structures located at or near Tustumena Lake, Killey River, Private Allotment (Skilak Lake) and Wilderness Adventure Lodge (Skilak Lake).

In the latter part of this week, a rise in humidity and dew point as well as a light marine layer are expected to move into the affected area and the potential for fire spread (to the east, at least) will decrease.

According to a report from Slate, Alaska experiences wildfires that burn through approximately a million acres of land per year, although experts maintain that that number is growing. The Bureau of Land Management has put together a pre-season outlook for the 2014 fire season and the expected number of active fires is expected to be above normal.

Over the past decade, between 2004 and 2013, Alaska has seen the total area burned by large fires increase to 1.8 million acres. This number is approximately double the long-term average experienced in the second half of the 20th century, between 1950 and 2012, when the average acreage of land destroyed by wildfires annually was 900,000.

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