Firefighters on Sunday battled a massive fire whipped by high winds that spread over thousands of acres of state land in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens, a forested area of coastal plain that stretches more than 1 million acres.

State environmental protection department officials say the blaze was reported Saturday afternoon in Penn State Forest in Woodland Township.

Department spokesman Larry Hajna said Sunday afternoon the blaze had grown to 10,000 acres with about 75 percent containment. Officials said plumes of smoke were visible from as far as Freehold, about 40 miles away.

Residents as far away as Brooklyn, New York were reporting that they can smell the smoke.

The smoke plume from the South Jersey blaze even appears on radar.

In addition to smoke, residents in areas of Monmouth and Middlesex counties were reporting falling ash covering vehicles Sunday morning.

Residents in Lakewood, NJ reported that ash had been falling all morning.

Hajna says a portion of Route 72, the main road across the Pinelands, has been closed. No homes or businesses are endangered and no injuries or mandatory evacuations have been reported. The cause of the blaze is under investigation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bqGxHsiA9k

The fire was burning through the Penn State Forest, which the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protected describes as “undeveloped wilderness” that attracts picnickers and hikers. The forest is part of the Pine Barrens, which contains several areas of pine and oak forest.

Many took to Twitter on Sunday morning to show the clouds of smoke from the blaze and report smelling smoke upwards of 50 miles away, including on New York’s Staten Island.

A little science on the night shift (thread)! We've gotten many questions about the smoke across central and northern NJ tonight. This smoke is originating from the Spring Hill Forest Fire in Penn State Forest in Burlington County. #njwx pic.twitter.com/OW8GmTS1Ii

— NWS Mount Holly (@NWS_MountHolly) March 31, 2019

#PineBarrens #Wildfire this is what my backyard in #TomsRiver looks like…@nj1015 @njdotcom @News12NJ pic.twitter.com/QNcs99Wj0N

— Liz Rios🇺🇸 (@LiRi347) March 31, 2019

STILL BURNING… The Penn State Forest fire continues to burn in Burlington County this morning. Winds are firmly out of the southwest, so the smokiness should be limited to northern Ocean and eastern Monmouth counties. pic.twitter.com/x73zi94dlX

— Meteorologist Dan Zarrow (@DanZarrow) March 31, 2019

https://twitter.com/CFSparta92/status/1112197910593265664

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