The fire is not following the typical pattern: growing more active in the afternoon, then calming as darkness falls, Dies said.

"We'll probably have an active fire until midnight or so before it quiets down," she said.

About 265 homes were evacuated in just a few hours Sunday night on the western flank of the fast-moving blaze, said Kelly O'Connell, Sweetgrass County disaster and emergency services coordinator.

Fire officials feared that wind and higher temperatures this week would create extreme fire conditions.

The fire was spreading on its southwest side Monday, fire information officer Char Fuller said. Crews were trying to protect buildings, particularly along the western flank.

"They're trying to do operations to protect those structures, but they're not making any guarantees," O'Connell said. "They're just working as hard as they can."

About 770 firefighters and support personnel are working the blaze, on the ground and with helicopters and heavy air tankers. Fire officials have ordered more people and equipment to help fight the fire in anticipation of a difficult week.

The natural level of CO2 over most of the past 800,000 years has been 180-300 parts per million by volume (ppmv) of air. But today it is at 380 ppmv.

"The most scary thing is that carbon dioxide today is not just out of the range of what happened in the last 650,000 years but already up 100 percent out of the range," Wolff said at the British Association Festival of Science in Norwich, eastern England.

CO2 was close to 280 ppmv from 1000 AD until 1800 and then it accelerated toward its present concentration. Wolff added that measurements of carbon isotopes showed the extra CO2 coming from a fossil source, due to increased human activity.

The ice core record showed it used to take about 1,000 years for a CO2 increase of 30 ppmv. It has risen by that much in the last 17 years alone.

"We really are in a situation where something is happening that we don't have any analog for in our records. It is an experiment that we don't know the result of," he added.

Professor Peter Smith, of the University of Nottingham in England, said the study showed more needed to be done.

"There is an urgent need to find innovative technologies to reduce the impact we are having on our climate," he told the science conference.

A sequence of canals and pipelines would channel sea water down through the arid Arava valley in southern Israel and Jordan to the salt lake at the lowest point on earth, 415 metres below sea level.

Action is urgently needed. Over the past 50 years the Dead Sea's depth has fallen by 20 metres. The so-called "Red to Dead" plan is to reverse this fall, which has been so dramatic that it has left the Israeli spa resort of Ein Gedi a mile from the water's edge.

Foster's intervention is the latest in a series of increasingly ambitious schemes by the architect. Last month he revealed plans for the 2,000ft Moscow City Tower, to cost £830m and house 25,000 people, and he is building the world's largest new airport in Beijing.

Now 71, he has timed his proposal to coincide with an agreement between the leaders of Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority to spend a $15m World Bank grant on investigating the feasibility of a canal project.

Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, have recently signed letters expressing their commitment to the project, despite the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel. The study will be financed by France, America, the Netherlands and Japan.

It is understood that Foster has personally promoted his version of the plan in informal meetings with senior Israeli officials over the last 18 months, and with a presentation in Amman to representatives of Jordan's King Abdullah.

The one metre a year fall in the level of the Dead Sea has already left the surrounding terrain unstable and prone to cave in, which puts roads, hotels and chemical plants around the sea in jeopardy. Oases have also been disrupted, affecting bird migrations and desert wildlife, including ibex, gazelles and even leopards.

According to Gidon Bromberg, the Israeli director of Friends of the Earth in the Middle East, the reduction has been caused by the diversion of the River Jordan, which feeds the Dead Sea, for irrigation and drinking water - mostly by Israel, but also by Jordan and Syria. Today, less than 7% of the river's original flow reaches the sea.

"A river holy to half of humanity has been reduced to little more than an open sewer," said Bromberg.

Guy Battle, Foster's environmental engineer on the project, said this weekend that the plan includes vast desalination plants along the canal to provide fresh water to make the desert bloom and supply drinking water. It is hoped that these facilities, which use the heat of the desert sun to evaporate sea water under a translucent bubble roof, could help reduce regional disputes over water.

Ariel Sharon, the ailing former Israeli prime minister, once called Israel's diversion of the River Jordan in 1964 the spark that led to the six day war in 1967. Palestinians are still forbidden to sink new wells.

Foster's office confirmed that he had completed preliminary studies and said the firm was awaiting further instruction from the Jordanian government.

An aide to Shimon Peres, the Israeli deputy prime minister, said: "We have had talks with the Jordanians, and they want to advance this. King Abdullah wants it the most because most of [the structure] would be built in Jordan."

The three-way project had the potential to boost the peace process, said Peres.

At the northern end of the route, there would be a hydro-electric plant.

However, Friends of the Earth warned that mixing water from the Red Sea with the unique chemical soup of the Dead Sea could create a natural catastrophe. "The [Dead Sea's] mix of bromide, potash, magnesium and salt is like no other body of water on the planet," said Bromberg. "By bringing in the marine water, this composition will be changed. There is concern about algae growth and we could see the sea change from deep blue to red and brown and the different waters could separate."

In Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, across the border from El Paso, rain flooded at least 20 neighborhoods, knocked down electricity poles and caused several traffic accidents. Hundreds of people were evacuated from one neighborhood because of concerns about a nearby dam that exceeded its capacity, said Luz del Carmen Sosa of the city's public safety department.

In Mexico, three people were killed across the Baja California peninsula, including a British man who died when his camper was swept away by floodwaters and two Mexicans who drowned in strong river currents, said Victor Guluarte, the state's interior secretary. A total of 160 houses on the peninsula lost their roofs and four houses collapsed, officials said.

In the El Paso area, where almost 3 inches of rain had fallen since Friday, no injuries or evacuations were reported, unlike during storms about a month ago that washed out roads and chased people out of their homes.

"We haven't seen a replay of what we saw several weeks ago," Sambrano said. "We've been very fortunate because it's actually been nonstop rain throughout the night."

A Continental Airlines jet got stuck in mud Monday at El Paso International Airport when it steered off the taxiway as it was headed toward the terminal after landing, airline spokeswoman Julie King said.

No one was hurt, other flights were not affected and passengers were shuttled to the terminal by bus. The airplane remained in the mud late Monday afternoon, and the
Federal Aviation Administration was investigating the cause of the mishap, airport spokeswoman Liz Bellegrade said.

The
National Weather Service issued flash flood watches or warnings Monday for parts of southern New Mexico and parts of West Texas and the Southern California deserts.

Carlsbad, N.M., reported curb-to-curb water on the streets from three days of rain. Several low-lying roads in the area were closed, but dispatchers said none were major thoroughfares and there were no serious problems.

In Ruidoso Downs, conditions were muddy for the running of the $2 million All American Futurity quarter horse race, the biggest day of horse racing in New Mexico.

Heavy rain on Sunday shut down the 8th annual Harvest Wine Festival in Las Cruces, N.M., the first time the festival had ever been rained out, organizers said. The Las Cruces airport reported more than 2 inches of rain in 3 hours Sunday.

John was a Category 2 hurricane with sustained wind of 110 mph when it struck near the southern tip of Baja on Friday, but officials reported only minor damage. The area hardest hit was La Paz, the capital of Baja California del Sur state.

"Fortunately there is no human loss and the impact (in terms of damage) is relatively modest," Mexico President
Vicente Fox said Sunday as he toured the city and pledged to help residents whose homes had been damaged.

By early Monday, the storm's maximum sustained wind had slowed to about 30 mph, well below the 39 mph threshold for a tropical storm, as it slowly moved northwestward up the spine of the narrow Baja Peninsula.