Searchers in Dyer County found the body Monday evening, bringing to 16 the number of people killed in the northwestern county, according to Kurt Pickering, spokesman for the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency.

Another eight died in neighboring Gibson County in Sunday night's storms, and there were four other fatalities in Missouri and Illinois.

Pickering said no one was now missing in the region, though 17 survivors suffered critical injuries.

The tornado outbreak -- which produced 64 unconfirmed reports of twisters across the central United States -- was the deadliest since November, when 23 people died in southern Indiana.

The Tennessee storms left a 25-mile path of destruction, demolishing houses, stripping the bark off trees and hurling people into the air.

Survivors told of desperately trying to hold onto one another as the storms sucked them into swirling debris. One family of four -- the parents in their 20s and two sons age 5 and 3 -- were killed, their bodies found later in fields near what had been their home.

Water breached a 30-foot section of levee along a creek in Merced, sending water pouring through a mobile home park, said Michael Miller, a spokesman for the Department of Water Resources.

South of Sacramento, a Consumnes River levee gave way, swamping pastures but not threatening any homes. The same area broke in January during heavy storms. The amount of land under water not immediately known.

San Francisco had a record 25 days of rain in March. Oakland, San Rafael and Santa Rosa also broke rainy-day records in March. Sacramento received 5.29 inches of rain in March, nearly 2 1/2 inches more than average, according to the National Weather Service.

The rain also is melting snow in the mountains, swelling streams in the Central Valley.

"Right now, it's a lake," Gov. John Hoeven said after flying over the Red River Valley. "I mean, it just spread out. There's a lot of water."

Even after all the levee construction and property buyouts following the 1997 flood, city officials estimated about 75 homes in the Fargo area were still in danger.

In the surrounding rural area, officials sent out boats to check on residents whose homes were no longer accessible. They had already shut down dozens of roads, said Cass County Commissioner Vern Bennett.

"We had to rent about 50 road closing signs because we ran out," he said.

Just across the Red River, near Moorhead, Minn., about a dozen homes were surrounded by water, and residents were using boats to get supplies, Clay County Sheriff Bill Bergquist said. Moorhead officials built a dike in a park on the city's south side, where about 100 homes were at risk.

Weather forecasters had some unwelcome news Tuesday, as well: More rain is expected in the area later in the week, and it could extend the flooding in some areas, said
National Weather Service meteorologist Greg Gust.

Thirty miles north of Moorhead, in Hendrum, Minn., volunteers rescued more than two dozen cows from a flooded pasture.

The Wild Rice River was expected to crest there Wednesday about 13 feet above flood stage, though a levee and temporary dike were expected to keep the city dry, said Kevin Ruud, environmental services director for the county.

Rudd said the Army Corps of Engineers reinforced the existing levee at Hendrum and prepared to close U.S. Highway 75 with a dike of clay that should keep the city dry. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty also authorized 135 National Guard troops assist with dike patrols, security and traffic control in the area.

In Grand Forks, Mayor Mike Brown declared an emergency although officials said they expected no major problems.

The Grand Forks area is protected by a levee system that was built after the 1997 flood. Still, two of the three bridges between Grand Forks and East Grand Forks, Minn., have been closed. The National Weather Service expects the Red River to crest at Grand Forks at about 47.7 feet on Thursday, about 20 feet above flood stage.

The Colorado State University team led by Dr. William Gray, a pioneer in forecasting storm probabilities, said it expected 17 named storms to form in the Atlantic basin during the six-month season, which officially begins on June 1.

Nine of the storms will strengthen into hurricanes, with winds of at least 74 mph, the team said, reaffirming an early prediction made in December and updated to include current trends like the La Nina weather phenomenon, cool Pacific waters and an abnormally warm Atlantic.

The Colorado State forecasters said five of the hurricanes were likely to be major storms, reaching at least Category 3 on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity, and boasting winds of at least 111 mph. Storms of Category 3 strength and above cause the most destruction.

But they also said there were likely to be fewer major storms making landfall in the United States compared to 2005, when virtually every hurricane record was broken, and also 2004, when Florida was bashed by four consecutive hurricanes.

"Even though we expect to see the current active period of Atlantic major hurricane activity to continue for another 15-20 years, it is statistically unlikely that the coming 2006-2007 hurricane seasons, or the seasons that follow, will have the number of major hurricane U.S. landfall events as we have seen in 2004-2005," Gray said in a statement.

HARD TO PREDICT

Gray's predictions are valued by companies but their accuracy can be difficult to gauge because they are revised regularly as a season progresses.

The Colorado State team, for example, initially predicted 13 storms for 2005 and raised the forecast in May last year to 15. It wasn't until August 5 -- almost halfway through the season-- that Gray increased the prediction to 20 storms. In the event, 2005 saw a record 27 named storms, of which 15 became hurricanes.

Last year was the costliest and most destructive season ever, with $80 billion in damages from Katrina alone.

Hurricane Rita hammered Texas and Hurricane Wilma became the most intense Atlantic hurricane observed before slamming into the Mexican resort of Cancun and then curving back over South Florida, where it caused $10 billion in damage.

Hurricane Stan, meanwhile, killed up to 2,000 people across Central America.

The long-term statistical average is for around 10 named storms per season, of which six become hurricanes.

Gray is a leading skeptic about human-induced global warming and believes that heightened Atlantic hurricane activity since 1995 reflects a natural variation in water temperatures and atmospheric conditions that may last for up to 20 more years.

Climatologists have found few indications that global warming could be linked to the increasing number of Atlantic storms.

But there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that warmer sea surface temperatures are already causing hurricanes in the Atlantic, and typhoons and cyclones in the Pacific, to become more powerful.

Gray and CSU team will update their forecast on May 31, August 3, September 1 and October 3.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issues its hurricane season forecast on May 22.

Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany dispatched 6,000 soldiers, 5,000 police, 1,000 firemen and 815 border guards to some of the worst-hit areas in the country.

Before the reinforcements were announced, some 25,000 people, half of them volunteers, were busily engaged.

Under an emergency plan, a 1.5-million dollar cash fund has been set up for emergency aid and the upper limit of the budget allocation for flood protection has been lifted, Gyurcsany added.

"If need be, the total general reserves of the budget can be utilized for flood control," Hungarian Finance Minister Janos Veres told reporters on Tuesday.

In the Hungarian capital, where a state of emergency was declared on Monday, the Danube reached a record 8.48 meters on Tuesday and was expected to crest at 8.65 meters by Wednesday morning.

The river's rise has so far exceeded the level reached during the catastrophic 2002 floods.

No shipping is allowed on the Danube except for ferries serving communities cut off by the floods. Some schools were shut and a few inaccessible polling stations had to be moved ahead of Sunday's general elections.

Recovery will be slow and there could be more flood surges on the Danube and the more unpredictable offshoot Tisza, Gyurcsany warned.

Budapest is safe up to a river level of 10 meters, Mayor Gabor Demszky said. "No reason for panic, the city is not in danger," said Demszky.

Authorities said Tuesday that river levels appeared to be easing in the north of the country, where a state of emergency also applies, together with one in the center of the country.

A 15-km section of Route 6, a main traffic artery running near the flooding Danube south of Budapest, was closed, so that wild animals trapped in the flooded plain could safely cross to the other side and head for higher ground.

President Laszlo Solyom on Tuesday visited the affected towns in northern Hungary.

He inspected schools, hospitals and local flood protection operations, and was briefed on the current accommodation and rescue efforts.

"According to the latest estimates, the total damage will exceed 10 billion forints (about 50 million dollars) and it will probably not be more than 30 billion (140 million dollars), but that is assuming no major dams bursting anywhere," Prime Minister Gyurcsany said.

The floods also hit other countries in Central Europe. At least a dozen people have lost their lives in floods and some were still missing.

Flooding killed three people Monday in Dhamar, 70 kilometers (45 miles) south of Sanaa, witnesses said. Three more people, including two young girls, died in the province of Hodeida, some 270 kilometers (170 miles) west of the capital.

Another six people were struck dead by lightning Monday in Manakhah, which lies midway between Hodeida and Sanaa, and in the southwest of the country, the official Saba news agency reported.

At least five people were killed by floods that swept through Dhamar at the start of Yemen's rainy season in February.

Ten people were killed in similar flooding in April last year.

"It is a real massacre, we cannot any more count the number of animals that we have lost in the past weeks," said Diide Tadi, head of Dire district, which is among the worst affected areas in Borena region.

At least 100,000 animals have died in the last two months in Borena, home to nearly 100,000 pastoralists, while some 250,000 people out of about one million residents in the larger Oromo region currently depend on relief aid, officials said.

But according to United Nations predictions, the number of those needing relief assistance is likely to double next month.

At least 5,000 people depend on the Goraye watering hole, which was recently repaired by the UN agency for children (UNICEF) and also serves herders from Kenya who travel for about 100 kilometres (60 miles from the south of Ethiopia.

With the fast dying animals, international relief group CARE hurriedly put up an abbatoir to buy dying stock from the herders and then distribute the meat to the hunger-stricken locals.

"Because of the drought, we slaugter up to 100 cattle a day because they are too weak to walk," said Gilma Liben, an official with CARE.

In addition to Ethiopia, a severe drought that has gripped the east African nations of Kenya, Somalia and Djibouti has put some 11 million people on the brink of starvation according to the UN.

The situation is mainly affecting children of the pastoralist communities as they depend on milk from the cattle now falling in the wake of the scorching drought.

Meanwhile according to Dejene Benti of the US Medical Corps International, infant malnutrition is hovering near 20 percent which he warned is critical, resulting in about 30 children being hospitalised at a health centre in Goraye due to drought-sparked malnutrition.

"When animals die, it is the children who are directly affected because in this pastoral society, 60 percent of food is from milk," said Marc Rubin, an official with UNICEF.

However, with the light rains that have fallen in the region recently, the situation remains critical and worse still, the showers risk sparking infection as run off washing rotting carcasses drains into open pans and other water holes that are used by local communities.

"With all the carcasses lying along the roads, the rain will collect all the dirt and contaminate the ponds and the wells where people drink, this will be problematic as it could cause a lot of disease," Dejene warned.

Residents here say the current drought is the most severe in recent times with some 1.5 million people in the country's eastern and southern regions having no access to potable water since January.

"I cannot remember ever having seen such a severe drought in at least the last five years," said Gaarso Lema, a 25-year-old herder who said he has to, on certain days, trek for between 10 and 15 kilometres in search of pasture.

"Three years ago, I lost 14 animals, but this time I have lost 25. I only remain with five and I fear that they will all die," he added.

He said a laboratory in the capital confirmed the boy was infected with the H5N1 avian flu virus.

Six Cambodians have died of bird flu since the H5N1 virus first emerged in Southeast Asia in late 2003. The 12-year-old's death is the second this year.

Last month, a 3-year-old girl died of the disease. The girl lived in a village in Kampong Speu province about 40 miles (60 km) west of Phnom Penh.

Most Cambodian outbreaks have occurred in provinces abutting Vietnam, which remains the hardest hit country in terms of human deaths, but Kampong Speu is in the middle of the country, showing the virus was spreading.

Before the latest death, 191 people were known to have been infected with H5N1 worldwide since 2003, of whom 108 had died, the WHO has said.

Last week, a government minister said tests confirmed the H5N1 virus in dead ducks near Cambodia's border with Vietnam.

"This makes us worried that the virus will spread to other areas because of our poor health system and bad communications," Deputy Agriculture Minister Yim Vanthoeun told Reuters last Thursday.

The H5N1 virus remains mainly a disease of poultry, but could spark a pandemic in which millions could die if it mutates into a form that spreads easily from person to person, the WHO says.