The North Carolina wildfire, which has burned for more than a week, spread even more Tuesday, growing to 40,195 acres, or nearly 63 square miles - larger than the city of Richmond.

James Foster, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Wakefield, said a cold front headed toward Hampton Roads made the winds shift north and pushed the heavy smoke into the region.

Personnel in the field reported up to an inch of rain late in the day on the southeast side of the fire, said Hannah Thompson, a spokeswoman with the North Carolina Division of Forest Resources.

That provided little comfort Tuesday night in Hampton Roads. In Portsmouth, a thick haze of smoke settled around the downtown area shortly after 9 p.m., the 911 center said.

"Smoke conditions and the smell of smoke is getting strong in the Norfolk area," Norfolk Fire-Rescue spokesman Jack Goldhorn said shortly after 8 p.m. "We are getting a high number of calls from residents in regards to the smell of fire."

People reported smelling grass, rubbish or vinyl burning, he said. Norfolk got 15 to 20 calls between 6:15 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. Suffolk got about 25 calls, police Lt. Debbie George said.

A spokeswoman for Sentara hospitals said there were no reports of emergency-room visits in Hampton Roads for breathing difficulties.

The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality said the air- quality index in Hampton Roads would be code yellow today, an improvement over Tuesday's code orange. Under the orange status, the air can be unhealthy for certain people to breathe.

As relief from the heat comes today, winds will shift, likely changing the direction of the wildfire's spread and possibly clearing smoke from the air in Hampton Roads, Elizabeth City and other communities north and west of the Albemarle Sound and the Outer Banks by evening. The fire is in a rural, three-county area about 50 miles west of the Outer Banks.

John Jacobson, a National Weather Service incident meteorologist assigned to the Evans Road fire, predicted that the wind would shift overnight .

By 8 a.m., the smoke should start migrating southward. It will take into the evening to clear, if at all, said Casey Dail, a meteorologist at the weather service's office in Morehead City, N.C.

"I think it will diminish it a little bit," she said of the change in wind direction.

The smoke may return by Friday, she said.

"But that's pretty far out," she said. "I don't want to speculate."

The wind shifts will cause the fire to change direction, testing containment lines that haven't seen the blaze before, or at least not since last week, Jacobson and Thompson said.

"If it does make a huge shift, we'll make a best effort to hold existing lines," Thompson said.

The fire was still only 40 percent contained by Tuesday evening, and a spot fire led to an evacuation order for about 50 homes to the south of the blaze.

Thompson said 20 miles of containment lines still need to be built or improved.

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Written by Ryan Hutchins and Patrick Wilson