LANDER -- Mother Nature has doused Wyoming's two major wildfires with rain and snow, reducing both to smolder through the underbrush, forest officials said Tuesday.

They warned, however, the return of hot, dry weather could reinvigorate the blazes. Both fires have been consuming beetle-killed trees in western Wyoming for more than a month.

Neither fire has been extinguished, but both have cooled tremendously and should stay calm for at least the next few days, representatives of the Shoshone and the Bridger-Teton national forests said.

And even though the Gunbarrel fire has cost the federal government nearly $10.5 million so far, officials are saying it has been economically valuable -- even cheap if one considers the ecological benefits.

The Gunbarrel fire, ignited by lightning on July 26, has burned almost 105 square miles of dead and fallen pine trees between Cody and Yellowstone National Park.

The New Fork Lakes blaze, caused by an out-of-control camp fire on July 29, has scorched more than 23 square miles of dead, dried-out trees, 19 miles north of Pinedale.

Wapiti District Ranger Terry Root said the Gunbarrel blaze consumed trees that "needed to be burned" west of Cody. The "decadent" timber was in the wilderness, and it couldn't be removed otherwise, he said.

"So burning is really our only option to recycle the forest," Root said. "We feel like it has actually been pretty good, economically -- actually pretty economically valuable. It comes out to about $153 an acre."

It costs the U.S. Forest Service about $300 per acre to perform fuel reduction projects regionally.

The result will be a 35-mile stretch of rejuvenated forest in the coming years, Root said.

"We lost no private residences, no structures, and we had no serious injuries. We're looking at it as a real success," he said.

Nearly an inch of precipitation drenched the blaze in some spots, and humidity levels went up as the temperatures dropped in recent days, Root said. All of these factors have combined to slow the fire down.

"There are no flare-ups today, it's just smoldering," he said Tuesday. "We may not even see any smoke today, or for a couple days, until the weather starts to warm up. But we could still have some fire growth after we get warmer and drier weather."

Mary Cernicek, spokeswoman for the Bridger-Teton National Forest, said about an inch of rain north of Pinedale has stopped the trees from igniting, but the New Fork Lakes fire is still creeping through the undergrowth.

"If the weather were to change, and things were to dry out, it could flare back up in the wilderness area," Cernicek said. "There is still a lot of beetle- and bug-killed timber there. But right now it's policing itself."

Firefighters will continue to make sure the blaze stays in the wilderness area, and will keep steering it toward the beetle-killed trees, she said.

"Until the storm hit this weekend, it was burning well enough that they had issued a temporary closure for some trails in the area. But with this wet weather, we have lifted the temporary closures," Cernicek said.

Because the New Fork Lakes fire has remained quite a bit smaller than the Gunbarrel blaze and has not posed as much of a threat to man-made structures, the total cost has been about $2 million, or less than 20 percent of the Gunbarrel fire's price tag.

Contact Chris Merrill at (307) 267-6722 or chris.merrill@trib.com