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JUNCTION CITY, Calif. - Scattered showers forecast for California's northern mountains Sunday are unlikely to extinguish wildfires that still threaten homes and could bring more lightning to the charred region, fire officials said.

The weather system is not expected to bring enough rain to have any effect on several huge blazes that have burned for nearly a month, said Pete Munoa, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

A bigger concern is thunderstorms predicted to accompany the system.

But fire officials said cooler temperatures mean lightning strikes don't pose as much of a threat as they did a month ago, when storms sparked nearly 2,100 fires that have burned over 400,000 hectares.

"The weather pattern, if it holds the way it is now, we should be able to get a foothold around these fires," Munoa said.

In the rural town of Junction City, residents were under mandatory evacuation orders for a third day Sunday as flames crept across the Shasta-Trinity National Forest. The month-old fire had spread to over 225 square kilometres by Sunday and was 49 per cent contained.

All but 34 of the fires sparked after a lighting storm on June 20 have been contained around the state, leaving over 3,800 square kilometres of destruction in what officials call the largest fire event in California history. Fires consumed roughly 4,000 square kilometres in all of 2007.

A handful of residents near Dry Lake in Humboldt County were still under orders to stay away from their homes as another remote blaze spread to more than 46 square kilometres. That fire was 60 per cent contained Sunday.

Authorities say most of California's remaining fires are on remote federal forest land and pose little threat to homes.