Texas wildfire: largest in state history [Video]

CANADIAN, Texas –

A wildfire spreading across the Texas Panhandle became the largest in state history Thursday, as a dusting of snow covered scorched prairie, dead cattle and burned out homes and gave firefighters a brief window of relief in desperate efforts to corral the blaze.

The Smokehouse Creek fire grew to nearly 1,700 square miles (4,400 square kilometres) over a vast, rural landscape of prairie and scrub brush cut by rocky canyons and dotted with oil rigs. It merged with another fire and is just 3% contained, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service.

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Gray skies from early cloud cover and the snow painted a bleak landscape: huge scars of blackened earth, charred houses that still smouldered, and dead cattle burned and stiff in the cold. In Stinnett, someone propped up an American flag outside of a destroyed home.

The Smokehouse Creek fire’s explosive growth slowed as snow fell and winds and …