Wildfires continue to rage in western U.S.

As of Monday, 22 large wildfires are burning nearly 850,000 acres in four western states and Alaska, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise.

Nationally, the focus has shifted to California and Montana where initial attack and large fire activity picked up over the weekend, the NIFC said. 

In California, nine fires were reported on Monday, CAL FIRE, the state firefighting agency, said. A total of 5,000 firefighters were battling the blazes.

A new fire, the Browning Fire, was reported late Monday afternoon near Sacramento. MetroFire Sacramento tweeted that multiple homes were threatened and evacuated, and that possible structures were damaged.

Elsewhere in California, campgrounds were evacuated and hundreds of homes were threatened by a 2-square-mile wildfire in the Sierra National Forest north of Fresno, and was 5 percent contained, the Associated Press said. This fire is known as the Willow Fire.

Additionally, four firefighters were injured Sunday and a fire engine was damaged in a wildfire threatening as many as 200 homes in the Sierra Nevada foothills northeast of Sacramento. The fire, known as the Lowell fire, was 20 percent contained.

Three of the four injured firefighters were released from the hospital on Monday, KXTV in Sacramento reported.

In Montana, fire crews were taking advantage of cooler, wet weather in fighting a fire in Glacier National Park in Montana that has burned about 5 square miles since it began July 21, the AP said.

Improving weather conditions in Alaska are helping firefighters as they work toward containment goals on the seven large fires across the state.

So far this year, 5.5 million acres have been burned in U.S. fires, the second-highest total acreage burned as of this date in at least 20 years.