"Currently, the main dams are planning to release some waters, and the national task force is advising people living near the dams and downstream to take precautionary measures and, if possible, move to higher ground," it said Sunday.

The facilities are the Gilgel Gibe dam on the Omo River, which has already flooded huge areas in the southwest; the Koka dam on the Awash River that has flooded in the east; and the Tise Aby dam on the Blue Nile in the north.

The release of water from these dams "may flood some areas," the task force said in a statement released by the information ministry.

In addition to the confirmed deaths, some 250 people are missing and 73,000 are affected, many of them left homeless by the raging waters that have killed thousands of valuable livestock and flooded huge tracts of farmland.

Officials said they had relocated at least 15,000 people to safer areas in view of the increasing threat of fresh flooding across the country, according to state television.

Some 13,000 people in the northern region and another 2,000 in the south had been relocated for fear of further flooding and landslides.

Overwhelmed authorities have appealed for international aid, and US soldiers began relief work on Saturday in the town of Dire Dawa, about 500 kilometers (300 miles) east of Addis Ababa, which was hit by floods on August 6.

The 35 Djibouti-based US naval engineers were setting up 52 large tents to house many of 6,000 people displaced by the waters, which killed 256, and erecting sanitation facilities amid growing fears of the spread of water-borne diseases.

"I am very impressed with what the Ethiopians and the others are doing to help the displaced. I am glad that we are part of this operation," Richard Hunt, head of the Djibouti-based Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, told AFP by phone.

With poor weather continuing to hamper relief efforts, particularly in the southwest Omo River valley where 364 drowned last week and up to 8,000 remain marooned in 14 inundated villages, officials feared a rise in the death toll.

"The rain in the highlands has continued, and the river waters are showing no signs of decreasing," said Major Solomon Gebere Michael, commander of army relief operations in the Southern Nationalities, Nations and People's state.

"It is hurting the search and rescue mission," he told AFP by phone from Amorate, some 800 kilometers (500 miles) south of Addis Ababa.

Military helicopters dangling special forces troops from ropes and ladders continued to fly over affected areas, dropping food and water and attempting where possible to pluck survivors from roofs and tree tops, Solomon said.

At the same time, he said rescue teams in boats had begun to face difficulties due to powerful currents and obstacles in newly created vast marsh areas in the Omo basin.

Meteorologists have warned that six areas in the north, west and south of the country will likely face further flood threats from the downpours that are expected to continue until the end of the June-to-September rainy season.

Ethiopia has repeatedly suffered heavy floods and droughts in recent years, devastating agriculture that provides a livelihood for the majority of the 70 million people living in the Horn of Africa nation.

Two soldiers who were part of a rescue effort were swept away in Jodhpur district but one was rescued, state Relief Minister Kirorimal Meena said and put the weather-related death toll at 21 since the floods hit Rajasthan Friday.

Four of those killed were children who drowned in the rising waters after clinging to a tree for hours on Saturday.

"In the last 33 years we have not seen such a situation in Rajasthan," Meena said Sunday as torrential rains lashed cut-off villages and towns more used to droughts.

Meena said districts such as Jodhpur, Jalore and Kota, which nestles in the desolate Thar desert, were severely hit by the floods and added the army was out in three other districts were tens of thousands of people were stranded.

Railways spokesman A.K. Khanna said the train was on its return trip from Khokhrapar in Pakistan's Sindh province when it was stranded in the floods but reached its destination at Munabao station in Rajasthan's Barmer district several hours behind schedule.

Earlier this month, more than 10 million people were affected by floods in four states while western Gujarat faced the brunt with its diamond-polishing hub of Surat remaining under water for five days.

Egas and a few others remain in Bilbao, defying a standing government order to leave the "red zone," and warnings from experts that, though calm for now, the Tungurahua volcano could be poised to erupt again.

Jose Grijalva, director of Ecuador's Civil Defense, said 3,000 people were evacuated under an emergency order immediately before and during the eruption, but many of them have returned.

Bilbao is one five areas, mostly on the volcano's western slope, where people are forbidden, he said. Nearly all of its 500 inhabitants fled to makeshift shelters in churches and schools in villages farther from the volcano.

Egas remained with his parents.

"We feared a big eruption, but not of this magnitude," he said, looking at yard-deep drifts of volcanic ash that had caved in rooftops, and at the still-hot pyroclastic flows - superheated material that shoots down the sides of volcanos like a fiery avalanche at up to 190 mph.

About 80 percent of Bilbao's adobe brick homes were destroyed.

"We are afraid, but we cannot leave our belongings, what little we have," Egas said. A few yards away, volcanic steam rose off an ash-contaminated creek that had supplied the community's irrigation water.

The eruption affected about 30,000 people, many of them poor Quichua-speaking Indians, in three highland provinces, officials said.

Police Capt. Jorge Ubidia said Saturday in Cotalo that he believed everyone should leave the volcano's slopes.

"The problem is that people don't want to leave, and we don't know if we should take them out by force," he told The Associated Press, peering up at the volcano, shrouded in clouds. "We're very frightened."

Grijalva confirmed two fatalities, and said that 30 other people listed as missing had been located in the homes of relatives or in shelters. Seven people remained hospitalized Saturday for injuries and burns.

Meanwhile, Juan Salazar, village mayor of Penipe, said the body of a man had been recovered Saturday outside the village.

The 85-year-old had been washed away by a flood of water caused by volcanic ash damming up the Puela river, and he was found by his family.

Authorities were searching for two more people from the hamlet who were believed buried by debris.

The 16,575-foot volcano 85 miles south of the capital, Quito, remained in an apparent state of calm Saturday, said Patricia Mothes, a volcanologist with Ecuador's Geophysics Institute. But she warned that energy was building up inside.

"We have had 72 hours go by and after several days of accumulating energy, many times there is an abrupt change, but when that will be, nobody knows," she said in a telephone interview from an observation post near Tungurahua.

Ash from the eruption covers nearly 500,000 acres of pasture and fields of corn, potato and other crops, said Patricio Donoso, president of Ecuador's Chamber of Agriculture.

Some 350 cows, pigs and other livestock have died, he added, and thousands of other head of livestock are "suffering digestive and respiratory problems" from volcanic contamination of grass and water.

The eruption Thursday was the 14th time Tungurahua has sent hot lava and ash onto villages on its flanks since its first recorded eruption, in the Spanish colonial era in 1534. After remaining dormant for eight decades, Tungurahua rumbled back to life in 1999 and has been active ever since.

Northern Vietnam is not the country's key area for rice production, but more rain was also expected in the southern Mekong Delta rice basket in coming days. However, most of the summer-autumn rice crop has already been harvested.

Natural disasters, especially floods and storms, kill several hundred people in Vietnam each year, mainly during the storm season between May and October.

This year's rains and floods caused no damage to the coffee crop in the Central Highlands where coffee trees are planted on higher ground.

Officials said four people were killed in a landslide in the northern province of Yen Bai on Saturday. Lightning killed two people in Nghe An province and two more on the outskirts of capital Hanoi while five were swept away in flash flooding.

Sunday's Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper said two people drowned as their boat capsized early on Saturday on a river in the southern province of Dong Nai.

Another man was swept away and reported missing in the northern province of Phu Tho after he tried to save his fish pond, the government report said.

As of Friday, at least 27 people were reported killed in northern and central regions of the Southeast Asian country.

No injuries were reported, but a dive team was making evacuations and swift-water rescues, he said. One car with two men inside was swept down Montana Creek near Talkeetna, but the men managed to escape when the car brushed against the bank.

Rising water undermined two bridges on the Parks Highway, and the road could be closed for two days, officials said. Traffic between Anchorage and Fairbanks was diverted, adding about 75 miles to the 362-mile trip.

Twenty-five feet of a bridge that crosses Troublesome Creek about 225 miles south of Fairbanks were washed out, and the span had dropped by a foot, state officials said.

Nearly 7 inches of rain was recorded at Talkeetna, about 100 miles north of Anchorage, including 3.7 inches Friday, said Tom Dang of the National Weather Service.

Engineers were overseeing the passage over a bridge of about 500 tourists who had been staying at a remote hotel, the state Department of Transportation said. Messages left with DOT officials Saturday night seeking more information were not immediately returned.

Gov. Frank Murkowski was briefed on the damage Saturday during a visit to Wasilla, about 40 miles north of Anchorage. He had earlier issued a disaster declaration, allowing state funds to be used for recovery.

The Alaska Railroad suspended all freight and passenger traffic between Talkeetna and Denali National Park. The rail lines run roughly parallel to the Parks Highway.

A mudslide washed out 55 feet of track north of Talkeetna, railroad spokesman Tim Thompson said. Crews began repairs Saturday.

Steve Hicks of Willow, about 40 miles north of Anchorage, planned to spend Saturday night at a Red Cross shelter. "The Red Cross was Johnny on the Spot," he said.

More rain is in the forecast.

Reason for the Season?: Cooler Sea Surface Temperatures

Part of the reason for the slow season is that tropical western Atlantic sea surface temperatures (SSTs) are running about normal, if not slightly below normal (see graphic below, which shows SST departures from normal).

In contrast, at the same time last year SSTs in the same region were running well above normal.

The cooler SSTs in the Atlantic are not an isolated anomaly. In a research paper being published next month in Geophysical Research Letters, scientists will show that between 2003 and 2005, globally averaged temperatures in the upper ocean cooled rather dramatically, effectively erasing 20% of the warming that occurred over the previous 48 years.

Global Warming?

The slow hurricane season and the cooling sea surface temperatures might be somewhat surprising to the public. Media reports over the last year have suggested that, since global warming will only get worse, and last year's hurricane activity was supposedly due to global warming, this season might well be as bad as last season. But it appears that Mother Nature might have other plans.

The Rest of the Hurricane Season

With only 3 named storms compared to 9 on this date last year, it is nearly impossible at this late date to have a season anywhere near as busy as last season, which totaled 27 by the end of the year. The most recent prediction from the National Weather Service (see first graphic, above) is for there to be 12 to 15 named storms by December -- only half of last year's total. It now looks like that prediction might be too generous.

While it is still possible for this hurricane season to end up above normal in activity and reach that forecast, each day that passes without so much as a tropical 'depression' makes that target less and less likely.