Hundreds of weary firefighters were racing against the clock on Sunday, pushing back massive brush fires that have destroyed near-record swatches of Texas countryside.

Fire fighters were hoping to make as much progress as possible before low humidity and strong winds set the stage for more potential flare-ups late Monday and Tuesday.

“We have gotten rain, but more importantly, we have gotten moister air, and that has been very, very helpful,” Marq Webb, a spokesman for the Texas Forest Service, said on Sunday.

Webb said the amount of acreage burned in Texas in 2011 is almost at the record level set in 2006, when nearly 2 million acres were burned by wildfires. So far this year, more than 1.8 million acres have burned.

“We’re only in April, with some of the worst wildfire months still to come,” he said. “We will certainly break that record.”