More than 270,000 hectares of crops and 900,000 domestic animals were also affected.

In mid-July, rainfall in northern, northeastern and southeastern parts of the province was about 50 to 70 percent less than the average, it said.

Forty-seven counties in these areas had less than 10 millimeters of rain. Reservoirs were 25 percent down on normal levels.

More than 20 days of drought and high temperatures since early July have hit southwestern Chongqing Municipality, affecting the lives of 3.5 million people and three million livestock.

Eighty-three reservoirs in Chongqing have suffered water deficiencies, with stored water in some 60 to 70 percent less than average, according to the municipal flood control and drought relief authorities.

Statistics show average rainfall in north China's Shanxi Province was only 65 millimeters in July, about half of the average of previous years.

About 730,000 people and more than 600,000 hectares of farmland were affected by the drought, said the provincial flood control and drought relief headquarters.

In northwest China's Gansu Province, about 450,000 people have difficulties in getting drinking water as high temperatures and low rainfall this summer have plagued most of the province.

People in some counties had to travel 50 kilometers for drinking water, according to the provincial flood control and drought relief sources.

Governments of these drought-hit provinces have allocated funds to help residents fight the drought by tapping ground water and improving water conservation facilities.

Temperatures hit or hovered near 100 degrees Fahrenheit in New York, Philadelphia and Washington, with hotter weather forecast for Wednesday. Detroit, St. Louis and Chicago were sweating it out in equally stifling temperatures.

"It is miserably hot outside and hard on everyone," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg told reporters. "This is a very dangerous heatwave. It's really more than just uncomfortable, it can seriously threaten your lives."

The National Weather Service issued excessive heat warnings and said the heat index -- how hot it feels when the humidity is combined with the air temperature -- was due to hit 115 F (46 C) in New York on Wednesday.

"If people do not take precautions, we could be looking at a significant number of fatalities," said Gary Conte, the weather service's warning coordinator meteorologist, adding that New York City had not suffered such a string of high temperatures since July 1999.

"The forecasted temperatures and heat indices (in 1999) were pretty close to what we're looking at now. The impact from that event resulted in 43 deaths in New York City and New Jersey with rolling blackouts, buckled roads and so forth."

RECORDS BROKEN

The National Weather Service said more than 50 temperature records had been set in the central and western United States in the past two weeks.

"The persistence of the unusually hot temperatures has made the past month one of the warmest since records began in 1895 for the contiguous U.S.," it said.

Meteorologists are analyzing data to determine if July 2006 has surpassed July 1936 to become the hottest on record.
New York City has opened hundreds of air-conditioned "cooling centers" and extended hours at public swimming pools, while urging the public not to open fire hydrants.

"It's too hot. It's hard to work, but we have to suffer to make a living," said Tajdar Sayed, who has been selling fruit from a street stand near New York's Times Square for 15 years.

Electricity grid operators did not expect to have to impose rolling blackouts, aimed at preventing uncontrolled outages, due to any lack of generating capacity.

However, in some regions, power distribution cables could fail, like those that recently left 25,000 Con Edison customers in New York without power for up to a week.

ConEd said late on Tuesday it had set a new record for peak electricity usage, reaching 13,103 megawatts at 5 p.m., which topped the previous record of 13,059 MW set on July 27, 2005.

In 2003, the worst blackout in North American history left up to 50 million people in Ontario, Canada, and eight U.S. states in the dark.

Commonwealth Edison reported about 10,000 scattered outages on Tuesday across its Illinois territory, including 2,700 customers on the south side of Chicago, who lost power Monday when an underground cable failed, spokesman Tom Stevens said.

In El Paso, Texas, heavy rains temporarily broke the region's drought and turned streets into raging rivers that uprooted trees and carried away cars.

At 5 a.m. EDT (0900 GMT), tropical storm warnings remained up for some of the small northeastern Caribbean islands and the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico and the U.S. and British Virgin Islands, as Tropical Storm Chris' maximum sustained winds remained near 60 miles per hour (97 kph), the U.S.
National Hurricane Center said.

The Miami-based hurricane center said Chris was expected to strengthen and could become a hurricane later on Wednesday as it traveled on a path that could take it into the Gulf of Mexico, where it could damage U.S. oil and gas facilities.

Chris was 65 miles northeast of St. Martin and moving west-northwest near 10 mph (17 kph). On that track, forecasters said, Chris' center would be north of the northernmost Leeward Islands later on Wednesday morning and remain north of the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico on Wednesday afternoon and evening.

The waters of the Gulf are particularly warm, as they were last year when they helped Hurricanes Katrina and Rita grow into monster storms that eventually slammed into the Louisiana and Texas coastlines. Warm water fuels hurricanes.

A tropical storm warning, telling residents to expect storm conditions within 24 hours, was up for Anguilla, St. Barthelemy, St. Martin and St. Maarten, Puerto Rico and the U.S. and British Virgin Islands.

It had been lifted for Antigua and Barbuda and St. Kitts and Nevis.

Chris was expected to bring up to 5 inches of rain over the northern Leeward Islands, U.S. Virgin Islands and parts of Puerto Rico, with up to 8 inches in some areas.

Forecasters have predicted up to 17 tropical storms and hurricanes this year. Last year saw a record 28, including Katrina, the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. It devastated New Orleans and other parts of the Gulf Coast and killed more than 1,300 people.

Rosa Reyes was given five minutes to evacuate with her 6-year-old daughter and a neighboring family after a rock wall behind her home collapsed. The tumbling wall punched a hole in the side of a house.

"The material things can be replaced," she said. "It sure didn't feel like five minutes."

A small apartment complex on a hill above Reyes' home was in danger of collapsing and had to be evacuated, said fire Capt. Keith Burch.

The rain threatened to push the Rio Grande over its banks and more than doubled the normal speed of the river's current, authorities said. The river started to recede Tuesday night.

The parched region had less than an inch of rain in the first six months of the year. But it may have gotten as much as 6 inches since Sunday, the National Weather Service said. Forecasters expect the rain to continue through at least Wednesday morning.

Volunteer fire departments around the county helped residents sandbag their homes.

In the city of Socorro southeast of El Paso, 60 National Guard troops were deployed to help residents, said state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh. The troops were borrowed from Operation Jumpstart, President Bush's initiative to use troops to combat illegal immigration.

The situation in Mexico was equally bad Tuesday, prompting Mayor Hector Murguia Lardizabal to declare a state of emergency in Juarez.

Fearing that the Rio Grande would overflow, authorities started evacuating more than 1,000 families from low-lying areas of the city.