A weekend change in the weather gave firefighters a big boost on the 54-day-old Zaca Fire, allowing Highway 33 to be reopened and cancellation of an evacuation warning for people west of the highway along the Ventura and Santa Barbara counties boundary.

Cooler weather and higher humidity — spawned by the remnants of Hurricane Dean moving through the area — helped firefighters achieve 90 percent containment Sunday and hold that into this morning, said fire information officer Victor Gutierrez, a Santa Maria city firefighter on loan to the U.S. Forest Service.

Lower temperatures and tropical air flowing in from the south kept the blaze from making any new runs, Gutierrez said.

However, those same conditions prompted the National Weather Service to issue a flash-flood watch for Santa Barbara and Ventura counties due to the chance of isolated thundershowers. Burn areas would be particularly susceptible to flash flooding, the National Weather Service said.

There also was a chance lightning could spark new blazes, but none had been reported by this morning, Gutierrez added.

The most troublesome area of the fire, which had burned 240,207 acres by this morning, continued to be the northeast flank, along Brubaker Canyon on the west side of Highway 33, Gutierrez said.

The acreage reported at 7 a.m. today was less than the 241,550 acres officials had reported early Sunday. Officials flew over the entire fire Sunday afternoon and “cut the size by 1,343 acres due to more accurate mapping,” an official said.

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By this morning, fire crews had completed fire lines around a large spot fire that started Friday in Brubaker Canyon and planned to continue building fire line on a spot fire that started Saturday near Cuyama Peak, according to fire spokeswoman Juanita Freel of the U.S. Forest Service.

Both of these spots are at the northeast corner of the fire, west of Highway 33. Officials planned to use aerial infrared photography and ground patrols today to identify and cool off hot spots, primarily along completed fire line in the Sisquoc River drainage and the northern perimeter of the fire.

On the Santa Ynez Valley side of the fire, crews continue with rehabilitation efforts along fire lines and roads north of Cachuma Lake. That work includes rehabilitating bulldozer lines and repairing fences, for example, Gutierrez said.

All areas and roads within the Los Padres National Forest Closure Area remain closed to public entry, including Happy Canyon and Figueroa Mountain roads at the forest boundary and the Snyder Trail, a popular mountain bike trail.

The closure includes approximately 888,000 acres in Santa Barbara, Ventura and Kern counties, including the entire San Rafael, Matilija, and Chumash wilderness areas, a portion of the Sespe Wilderness, and adjacent national forest lands.

Detailed information on the closure can be found at www.fs.fed.us/r5/lospadres or www.inciweb.org or at a Los Padres National Forest office.

The blaze, which began July 4 in Bell Canyon north of Los Olivos, is still estimated to be fully contained by Sept. 7.

Early today there were 2,004 people assigned to the fire, and suppression costs had reached $105 million.