Authorities announced that a 12-mile stretch of Interstate 95 in Volusia County may reopen today.

Its shutdown Wednesday was prompted by fear that pines up to 80 feet tall, which were damaged by a wildfire early this week, could topple onto the highway.

As soon as timber crews cut down a section of weakened trees -- which could take until late in the day -- state troopers will open the road, Florida Highway Patrol spokeswoman Kim Miller said.

The fast-moving showers Thursday were kind to downtown Orlando, where more than a half-inch of rain fell.

The New Smyrna Beach Municipal Airport, not far from the closed section of I-95 where a forest fire has scorched about 1,570 acres, received no rain, according to the National Weather Service. Forestry crews using their own gauges said less than a tenth of an inch of rain fell near fires in the area.

The National Weather Service reported three-quarters of an inch fell at the Leesburg airport, while Mount Dora fire authorities said their city recorded an inch.

Parts of Osceola County, where a 1,600-acre fire is burning southeast of St. Cloud, recorded a tenth of an inch.

In addition, a late-night storm hit parts of Central Florida.

The amounts were barely a drop in the bucket for a region that is about 7 inches behind normal rainfall amounts.

National Weather Service officials in Melbourne warned that winds behind the storms will bring low humidity of about 30 percent through much of this afternoon.

Jim Brenner, fire-management administrator for the Division of Forestry in Tallahassee, said those dry conditions can turn wildfires into uncontrollable monsters.

'They can grow very quickly and throw [ember] spots a half-mile to a mile,' Brenner said.

After three years of quiet wildfire activity, the state has seen 2,430 wildfires this year on 74,000 acres.

Two massive fires made an inferno out of parts of New Smyrna Beach and burned three homes.

Along with I-95, officials have temporarily closed the BeachLine Expressway in Brevard County and other major highways.

That is still a relatively moderate amount of wildfires because in particularly bad years, as much as several hundred thousand acres have burned.

Firefighters are braced for many more flare-ups caused by lightning as rains return during the next month.

If summer storms arrive on schedule, it could take until mid-June for the state to receive enough rain to sufficiently soak the land and reduce the fire risk.

The past six months have been extremely dry for most of the region.

For Orlando, the stretch of January through April was the driest four-month start to a year on record.

However, the U.S. Drought Monitor, a much-watched index calculated by federal and university experts, didn't show Central Florida under moderate drought until Thursday.

The region was last in drought in 2001 after four extremely dry years that saw nearly 1.5 million acres of wildfire.

Mark Svoboda, a National Drought Mitigation Center climatologist at the University of Nebraska, said Thursday's rain was only a small step toward what it will take to get out of drought.

'That definitely wasn't drought-busting rainfall,' Svoboda said.

Still, forecasts show higher chances of rain for the next 10 days, which might douse the drought, he said.

Another factor in Central Florida's favor is that the drought may be short-lived. Because the region received a lot of rain during the winter, the ground isn't as dry as it would be if there had been little rain during that time.

'We've been in a difficult situation above ground, but below ground things are fine,' said the University of Florida's Keith Ingram, coordinator for the Southeast Climate Consortium of university experts in Alabama, Georgia and Florida. 'There's plenty of water in the aquifer.'

Elaine Aradillas and Ramsey Campbell of the Sentinel staff contributed to this report. Kevin Spear can be reached at kspear@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5062. Erin Ailworth can be reached at 386-851-7925 or eailworth@orlandosentinel.com or 386-851-7925.