EASTON, Pa. - After the remnants of Hurricane Ivan filled their little ranch house with several feet of water, Dale and Charlotte Barr spent $40,000 to get it back in shape.

They were just about to tackle the last room - the kitchen - when the Delaware River overflowed its banks again this weekend.

"We're tired," said Dale Barr on Monday. "I'm 65 years old. I can't continue to do this every six months."

Flooding left one person dead and forced the evacuation of thousands of people in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. The New Jersey Statehouse, located near the banks of the Delaware, was shut down for the day. [...]

In New Jersey, where about 3,500 people were evacuated, acting Gov. Richard J. Codey declared a state of emergency, estimating property damage would approach $30 million. More than 4,000 homeowners were evacuated in Pennsylvania. [...]

The time to be most wary of a tornado is a spring afternoon in Texas or Oklahoma with thunderstorms brewing. But twisters do not limit themselves to these conditions or locations, a new study shows.

"If you're driving in a midnight rain in October near Lake Michigan, remember that a tornado is not outside the realm of possibility," says Robert Trapp of Purdue University.

Trapp and his colleagues studied more than 3,800 tornadoes in the United States from 1998 to 2000. Many of these were not of the typical variety that form in Tornado Alley - the flat, twister-prone region through the central plain states.

"In the heart of Tornado Alley, twisters most often develop from relatively small 'cell' storms that look like blotches on a Doppler radar weather map," Trapp said.

The conventional wisdom is that the tornado threat goes down when the cells merge into 100-mile-long line storms. But Trapp's team found this to be wrong, especially beyond the Alley. For example, about half of Indiana's 20 tornadoes a year come from line storms.

Nationwide, 79 percent of tornadoes arise out of cells, whereas 18 percent form from line storms, according to the study, which was supported by the National Science Foundation and reported in the February issue of the journal Weather and Forecasting.

"This implies that we may be overlooking many tornado-breeding storms in the Midwest and elsewhere," Trapp said. [...]

"We're not trying to be alarmist with these findings," Trapp said. "But we hope that people will stay alert to tornado risk even outside the traditional severe storm season."

MIAMI -- Like last year, the coming Atlantic hurricane season will be fiercer than normal, with a heightened probability of a major hurricane making landfall in the United States, a noted forecaster said yesterday.

After one of the most destructive hurricane seasons on record, William M. Gray, a professor at Colorado State University, said 2005 would see 13 named storms, of which seven would turn into hurricanes. He predicted three major hurricanes with winds exceeding 111 miles per hour.

The long-term average for the Atlantic basin is 9.6 named storms and 5.9 hurricanes, of which 2.3 are intense hurricanes, per season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30.

''All of the information we have collected and analyzed through March indicates that the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season will be an active one," Gray said in a statement.

Gray and Philip J. Klotzbach, an atmospheric research scientist at Colorado State, said they might increase their predictions for the number of storms in 2005 if weather conditions continued to point to a lack of significant conditions in the Pacific for El Nino. The El Nino weather phenomenon produces a distinct warming of Pacific waters and tends to suppress storm activity in the Atlantic.

''If the next few months verify our beliefs about the lack of significant El Nino conditions, it is likely that we will be raising our forecast numbers in our coming May 31 and Aug. 5 forecast updates," Klotzbach said.

TRENTON, N.J. - Heavy rains drenched parts of New Jersey over the weekend, flooding low-lying areas and causing thousands of people to evacuate homes threatened by the rising water.

The heavy rains began Saturday and persisted until midday Sunday, prompting acting Gov. Richard J. Codey to declare a state of emergency. Authorities urged hundreds of residents in each of six counties to leave low-lying areas and closed some state offices Monday near the Delaware River.

"We haven't had any major or traumatic problems so far, and that's what we're hoping to avoid with the evacuations," said Art Charlton, public information officer for Warren County.

Trenton Mayor Douglas H. Palmer ordered the evacuation of a neighborhood known as "The Island" late Saturday. Gas and electric service was shut off to homes, while displaced residents were offered space at a high school shelter.

Palmer said residents would not be allowed to return until at least Wednesday, and further evacuations may be needed.

In northern New Jersey, moderate to major flooding was expected in seven rivers. All the rivers had crested by early Sunday, and most were expected to reach at least 2 feet above flood levels before slowly receding Monday.

Some larger rivers, such as the Delaware, were expected to continue rising through at least Monday afternoon.

Trenton city spokesman Kent Ashworth said officials expected the Delaware to crest higher than it did last September, when the remnants of Hurricane Ivan forced thousands of residents to flee their homes for several days.

In Pennsylvania, several people had to be rescued by boat Sunday after rising floodwaters forced the evacuation of about 200 homes in Northampton County. The water reached nearly the level of traffic lights in the community of Easton, flooding many downtown buildings.

It was a dry, warm winter across the Northwest, with experts in some areas saying they can't remember the last time the snowpack was this low. It was just the opposite in the Southwest, with record winter rainfall that flooded deserts and caused murderous landslides.

Strangely, both face the same worry: Conditions are ripe for a bad wildfire season. Along with the dry forests in the Northwest, all that rain in the Southwest has fed lots of tall grass and brush that will become tinder when it dries this summer.

Ordinarily, when April arrives, Jack Owen considers himself lucky if any homeowners call his firm to remove brush from around their houses. But in this dry year in Oregon, his Wildfire Fuels Reduction is grinding up trees and bushes as fast as it can.

By this time last year, Owen's company in Bend had only done $1,200 in business. This year, edgy homeowners already have given the company $18,000 worth of work.

"At this time last year, one reason I didn't have much business was too much snow on the ground," he said.

Despite the rising threat, money for firefighting is expected to be tight.

"It's a concern, but we've implemented a significant number of cost management measures with our incident management teams and folks out there on the fire line looking at what we can do to cut our costs," said Alice Forbes, assistant director of operations for the Forest Service at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.

Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano has already authorized more than $1.2 million for firefighters and equipment.

Some governors fear fewer National Guard troops will be available to fight fires because of the war in Iraq, though Rose Davis, spokeswoman for the fire center, said plenty of other firefighters will be available. [...]

In parts of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana, the snowpack is only about 25 percent to 50 percent of normal. The U.S. Drought Monitor, which tracks conditions across the country, rates vast tracts of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho as "exceptional drought," the worst of five drought categories.

"In a lot of places, there's no comparison," Tom Perkins, a hydrologist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, said of the snowpack. "It's never been this low before."

The fire season in the Northwest could start as soon as late May. [...]

Southern California had its second-wettest rainy season on record, and rainfall in Arizona was well above normal. The snowpack in California's southern Sierra Nevada was 53 percent above average, and the Arizona Snowbowl ski area on northern Arizona's highest mountain reported a seasonal total of 37 feet of snow. [...]

If the North Atlantic Ocean's circulation system is shut down - an apocalyptic global-warming scenario - the impact on the world's food supplies would be disastrous, a study said last Thursday.

The shutdown would cause global stocks of plankton, a vital early link in the food chain, to decline by a fifth while plankton stocks in the North Atlantic itself would shrink by more than half, it said.

"A massive decline of plankton stocks could have catastrophic effects on fisheries and human food supply in the affected regions," warned the research, authored by Andreas Schmittner of Oregon State University.

The circulation system is like a conveyor belt, taking warm water from the Caribbean in the tropical western Atlantic to the cold latitudes of the northeastern Atlantic.

There, the warm surface water cools and sinks, gradually getting hauled around back to the southwest, where it warms again and rises to the surface.

This movement is vital for northwestern Europe, for the warm water brings the region balmy, wet weather. Without it, Ireland, Britain, parts of France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany would be plunged into prolonged, bitter winters.

The circulation is also essential for plankton, providing an upwelling of deep-water nutrients on which these tiny creatures feed. In turn, the plankton feed fish and other marine animals, which in turn are harvested by humans.

Schmittner, writing in the British weekly science journal Nature, said his computer model of plankton loss was based on a disruption of the circulation system over 500 years, during which the conveyor belt lost more than 80 percent of its power.

Temporary slowdowns in the Atlantic's circulation system have occurred in the past, most notably after the end of the last Ice Age, about 10,000 years ago, said Schmittner.

Isotope traces from Greenland icecores suggest there were bursts of rapid warmings of 10 C (18 F), which melted huge amounts of Arctic ice.

This influx, because it comprised cold freshwater, sank to the bottom of the ocean floor, essentially acting like a giant sandbag thrown on the conveyor belt, braking its movement.

Today, Earth is considered to be in an "inter-glacial" period - a balmy period between ice ages.

But scientists say there is a possibility of another big temperature rise induced by man-made global warming, caused by the spewing of fossil-fuel greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

One scenario, considered outlandish only a few years ago but now increasingly taken seriously, is that a fast melt of part of the Greenland icesheet could slow or stop the warm-water circulation in the North Atlantic, with catastrophic, long-term results.

All rights reserved. © 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the i

Climate changes in the northern and southern hemispheres are linked by a phenomenon by which the oceans react to changes on either side of the planet.

A research team from the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona and the Cardiff University has shown for the first time that ocean circulation in the southern hemisphere has, in the past, adapted to sudden changes in the north.

The research published today in Science will enable more accurate forecasts to be made on how the oceans will react to climate change.

The scientists have observed that at several periods in history when the temperature has increased in the northern hemisphere, the southern hemisphere has entered a cooling period, which creates a decrease in the amount of deep water transported to the Atlantic Ocean from the south.

The opposite effect also took place: when the climate cooled in the North Atlantic, the southern hemisphere entered a warmer period, causing water to be transported northwards.

These mechanisms linking the two hemispheres had already been observed in computer climate simulations, but this is the first time they have been confirmed with detailed data obtained from scientific experiments using weather records from the past.

This is the first evidence showing that waters in the southern hemisphere play an active role in sudden climate changes.

Today's climate in Europe and North America is greatly influenced by the gulf stream. This ocean current carries warm water from the Gulf of Mexico northwards along the Florida coast, eastwards across the Atlantic and southwards along the west coast of Europe, bringing a mild climate.

The strength of the current is dependent on the salinity of the water travelling from the south.

If the salinity decreases, the current weakens. Scientists predict that global warming could cause part of the Greenland ice sheet to melt, giving rise to increased levels of freshwater in the Atlantic Ocean.

This could reduce the strength of the gulf stream, creating a cooler, dryer climate in Europe and North America.

However, according to the authors of this latest study, the Atlantic Ocean could already be adapting to the changes brought about by global warming in the same way as it adapted to climate changes in the past.

The waters in the southern hemisphere are less salty than those in the northern hemisphere, and this freshwater in the south sinks to the ocean floor and is transported to the rest of the Atlantic, reducing the salinity of the North Atlantic Ocean and strength of the gulf stream.

Nevertheless, the researchers have observed a decrease in the volume of freshwater sinking to the floor of the South Atlantic Ocean.

According to Rainer Zahn, "although we don't know where global warming will take us, this could be a sign that the oceans are already adapting to the changes".

Science & TechnologyLawrence, Kan. - infoZine - Although the researchers do not have direct evidence that a gamma-ray burst activated the ancient extinction, their work is based on atmospheric modeling.

Adrian Melott, KU professor of physics and astronomy; Brian Thomas, a Ph.D. candidate whom Melott advises; and Daniel Hogan, Leawood senior in physics, joined Charles Jackman of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Laboratory, Greenbelt, Md., in the discovery. A scientific paper describing their findings appears in Astrophysical Journal Letters. Thomas is the lead author of the paper.

The researchers calculated that gamma-ray radiation from a relatively nearby star explosion, hitting the earth for only 10 seconds, could deplete up to half of the atmosphere's protective ozone layer. Recovery could take at least five years. With the ozone layer damaged, ultraviolet radiation from the sun could kill much of the life on land and near the surface of oceans and lakes, and disrupt the food chain.

NASA image Gamma-ray bursts in our Milky Way galaxy are rare, but the researchers estimate that at least one nearby likely hit the earth in the past billion years. Life on Earth is thought to have appeared at least 3.5 billion years ago.

"A gamma-ray burst originating within 6,000 light years from Earth would have a devastating effect on life," Melott said. "We don't know exactly when one came, but we're rather sure it did come -- and left its mark. What's most surprising is that just a 10-second burst can cause years of devastating ozone damage."

Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions known. Most originate in distant galaxies, and a large percentage likely arises from explosions of stars more than 15 times more massive than our sun. A burst creates two oppositely directed beams of gamma rays that race off into space.

A gamma-ray burst may have caused the Ordovician extinction 443 million years ago, killing 60 percent of all marine invertebrates, Thomas said. Life was largely confined to the sea, although there is evidence of primitive land plants during this period.

This research, supported by a NASA astrobiology grant, represents a thorough analysis of the "mass extinction" hypothesis first announced by members of this science team in September 2003. In the new work, the team used detailed computer models to calculate the effects of a nearby gamma-ray burst on the atmosphere and the consequences for life.

Thomas and Jackman calculated the effect of a nearby gamma-ray burst on the earth's atmosphere. Gamma rays, a high-energy form of light, can break molecular nitrogen into nitrogen atoms, which react with molecular oxygen to form nitric oxide (NO). NO will destroy ozone and produce nitrogen dioxide (NO2). NO2 will then react with atomic oxygen to reform NO. More NO means more ozone destruction. Computer models show that up to half the ozone layer is destroyed within weeks. Five years on, at least 10 percent is still destroyed.

Next, Thomas and Hogan calculated the effect of ultraviolet radiation on life. Deep-sea creatures living several feet below the water's surface would be protected. Surface-dwelling plankton and other life near the surface, however, would not survive. Plankton are the foundation of the marine food chain.

Bruce Lieberman, KU associate professor of geology, originated the idea that a gamma-ray burst specifically could have caused the great Ordovician extinction, 200 million years before the dinosaurs. An ice age is thought to have caused this extinction. But a gamma-ray burst could have caused a fast die-out early on and could have triggered the significant drop in surface temperature on Earth.

"One unknown variable is the rate of local gamma-ray bursts," Thomas said. "The bursts we detect today originated far away billions of years ago, before the earth formed. Among the billions of stars in our galaxy, there's a good chance that a massive one relatively nearby exploded and sent gamma rays our way."

The Swift mission, launched in November 2004, will help determine recent burst rates. Other team members are Claude Laird, project coordinator for the KU Center for Research, and Richard Stolarski, John Cannizzo and Neil Gehrels of NASA Goddard.

Winds ripping through central Florida on Thursday flipped planes and trucks, damaged buildings, snarled traffic and left a trail of downed trees and blackouts.

Marion County officials reported that the storm had damaged at least 20 homes, some severely, and left more than 6,000 customers without power. At least four people, including a pregnant teen riding a school bus, were injured, officials said.

Mary Krulikowski said she was in her van picking up her son from an Ocala high school when the storm "came out of nowhere."

"The sky darkened, tree limbs started hitting my van," she told the Ocala Star-Banner.

The Marion County Sheriff's Office said a tornado turned over planes and tore off hangar doors at Ocala International Airport. A National Weather Service spokesman said officials were investigating whether a tornado had touched down.

Earlier, rains flooded already saturated parts of the Panhandle.

A 100-foot section of Pensacola's landmark red clay bluffs was washed away as 7 inches of rain fell over a 24-hour period that ended Thursday morning. Part of Scenic Highway, overlooking Escambia Bay atop the bluffs, will be closed for several weeks while repairs are made, police said.

Thunderstorms also caused scattered power outages.

In Gulf County, nearly 150 miles east of Pensacola, about 65 homes and hundreds of secondary homes have been flooded since last week and the water was expected to stay high for several more days, said county Emergency Management Director Larry Wells.

The report said another two people had been injured and one person was missing after strong gales swept through more than 20 cities and counties including Guangyuan, Santai and Daxian.

"The severe weather also destroyed more than 20,000 houses, causing millions of yuan in losses," the dispatch said.

It said a relief effort, arranged by Governor Zhang Zhongwei of Sichuan province, had begun.

The state's drought-hit areas rose from 68 percent to 76 percent after the dry month of March, according to Ian Macdonald, NSW primary industries minister.

"It means that farmers are having to delay planting of winter crops, such as wheat and canola," Macdonald told ABC radio.

"And some of our summer crops such as sorghum have been badly hit. The rice industry will have its worst result in 30 years -- so it's a fairly grim position around the state."

The state's total water storage has also fallen to less than one-third of capacity, he said.

The eastern states of New South Wales and Queensland have been hard-hit by a drought that has ravaged rural communities for two or three years.

New South Wales is home to some 6.7 million of Australia's total population of just more than 20 million.

Public radio said the authorities had begun evacuating student dormitories at the University of Haifa, which is located on the mountain.

"Several dozen hectares (scores of acres) of forest are under threat from the flames on Mount Carmel, and some 20 firefighting teams, aided by aircraft, have been trying to subdue the fires for several hours," spokesman Moshe Mosco said Friday evening.

The blaze is also threatening an animal park on Mount Carmel.

The winds were expected to drop later Friday, the meteorological service said.

Ronald Webb said he thought the world was ending for a few seconds Friday afternoon.

It wasn't.

But the weather phenomenon that caused the racket above the home he shares with his wife on East Alvarado Street caused some damage.

Webb's family was working inside the garage at 1:30 p.m. when a "mini tornado' struck an outdoor shelter, he said.

"It sounded like a combination of a train, a sonic boom and a clap of thunder,' Webb said. "It was just crazy. It shook the whole house.'

Webb said the winds hoisted his cabana shelter made of thick wood planks and steel coverings from one corner of his back yard over his home before letting it crash to the street. The shelter was covering a boat, he said.

The shelter was torn to pieces, some of which ended up across the street in a neighbor's front yard. The majority of the debris ended up on Webb's lawn.

No one was injured. But one of Webb's vehicles was damaged and the incident left a few holes in his roof, he said.

Firefighters arrived, but did not stay long, said John Mancha, inspector with the Los Angeles County Fire Department.

While Webb said the Fire Department referred to the event as a "mini tornado, ' a spokesman for the National Weather Service disputed that.

"If there are no clouds in the sky, it really can't be classified as a tornado,' said Philip Gonsalves, forecaster for the National Weather Service. There were some gusty winds throughout the area Friday, which may have caused some funnel-type activity, he said. But Gonsalves said he could only speculate what caused the damage.

Webb retained his sense of humor about the situation.

"It's so much fun,' Webb said, looking out over the debris on his front lawn. "I wondered what I was going to do this weekend. Now I know.'

DENVER - Hundreds of travelers were stranded at the Denver airport and along highways Sunday as a blizzard blew across eastern Colorado with wet, heavy snow.

Seven to 10 inches of snow was forecast in Denver and up to 30 inches was possible in the foothills west of Denver, Colorado Springs and Boulder, the National Weather Service said. [...]

Fat, moisture-laden snowflakes were blown sideways by wind gusting to 30 mph. Xcel Energy reported that 11,000 customers were without power in the heavily populated Front Range region. [...]

Whiteout conditions shut down a 16-mile stretch of heavily traveled Interstate 25 between Denver and Colorado Springs, 60 miles to the south. I-70 was closed in both directions in the Denver area. The state Department of Transportation said crews reported whiteout conditions on Interstate 76 near the Nebraska state line. [...]

Three state-run prisons in Denver were also closed to visitors by weather for the first time ever, said Alison Morgan, spokeswoman for the state corrections department. [...]

BEIJING, April 11 -- A hailstorm in Sichuan Province and Chongqing Municipality has left 18 dead, one person missing and 25 injured, the People's Daily reported yesterday.

The biggest hailstorm, which fell in Chongqing, reached 13 centimetres in diameter, according to local reports.

Chongqing's eight districts also experienced gales and 140 millimetres of rainfall in last Friday's storm.

According to the municipal Office of Disaster and Social Relief, about 458,000 residents in 80 counties and towns in Chongqing were hit by bad weather, leaving five dead and 25 injured.

It is estimated that 140 million yuan (US$17 million) of damage was caused.

Qianjiang District in Chongqing was the worst affected, with hailstones destroying more than 27,800 houses and local crops. In this district alone, there was damage worth 35 million yuan (US$4.2 million).

Many cities in Sichuan were also affected by strong winds and heavy rainfall. Some cities, such as Leshan, Dazhou and Yibin, were also hit by hailstorms.

Thirteen people died in the province.

Ye Sheng, deputy director of Gaoxian County's Party committee in Yibin, said he witnessed a hailstorm that lasted for about one-and-a-half hours on Friday.

He said some hailstones were as big as eggs, and even small ones were the size of peas. "Many houses were pierced by the hail. It is the most serious hailstorm for 20 years in the county," he was quoted by People's Daily as saying.

A MIGHTY blast of radiation from an exploding star may have wiped out much of life in the sea 450 million years ago, scientists claim.

New research suggests that a gamma ray burst could have been responsible for the Ordovican mass extinction in which 60 per cent of all marine invertebrates died.

Gamma ray bursts are immensely powerful surges of radiation. Many are thought to have been caused by the explosions of stars over 15 times more massive than the Sun.

A burst creates two beams of gamma ray energy that race off across space in opposite directions.

The Ordovican mass extinction can be explained by a gamma ray burst within 6,000 light years of Earth, say scientists from the US space agency NASA and the University of Kansas.

Dr Adrian Melott, from the university, said: "A gamma ray burst originating within 6,000 light years from Earth would have a devastating effect on life. We don’t know exactly when one came, but we’re rather sure it did come - and left its mark."

Such a burst would strip the Earth of its protective ozone layer, allowing deadly ultraviolet radiation to pour down from the Sun.

Computer models showed that up to half the ozone layer could be destroyed within weeks. Five years later, at least 10 per cent would still be missing.

"What’s surprising is that just a ten-second-burst can cause years of devastating ozone damage," said Dr Melott. [...]

Intense wind leaves Wildwood residents breathless at its speed and strength

A freak wind blew through Wildwood last week, leaving some residents wondering if it was a mini-tornado.

People experienced the strange phenomenon just after 10 pm on Wednesday, April 6. Because it was dark out, no one saw a funnel cloud, but the impact led to speculation it was some kind of tornado.

John Harris, who lives on Nass Street, was inside his home when the gust hit. "It popped my screen door open, right from the lock," he said. "It pushed my window in. I have the old wooden-style windows and I saw it go in and go out."

Harris said he thought the wind must have been close to 80 miles an hour at that point. "But it only lasted less than five minutes. It was just there and it came, and poof, it was gone."

John Harris, his son who lives on Lund Highway close to the Top of the Hill store, said his whole house moved. "It was an incredible feeling," he said. "It wasn't like an earthquake shake, it was definitely like my house moved. It was interesting. Then that was it. It was over."

Cassia DePape, who also lives on Nass Street, felt the wind as well. "The pane on the window was shaking," she said. "It got really intense, and all of a sudden it was over."

A large branch from a weeping willow tree snapped off during the windstorm, landing a few metres away from her house.

DePape didn't see the branch fall, but her next-door neighbour, Jennifer Laycraft, did. "I was shocked," she said. "It was huge. I've never seen anything like that."

Laycraft said she thought there had been an earthquake. "My walls started shifting and my roof felt like it was going to fly off."

There were rain showers that night in the area, but the Powell River weather station recorded winds at six kilometres an hour from southwest at the time of the strong winds in Wildwood.

Hundreds of Cambodians were left homeless after a violent storm badly damaged 72 houses in central Kampong Thom province earlier this week, police said.

Huot Sarim, Stong district police chief, said the storm formed over Cambodia's Tonle Sap Lake Sunday and ripped into the mostly wooden and thatch houses in two district communes.

"Some people ran away and some sheltered under their houses, but luckily most people were still busy working outside when it hit, and most of the cows and buffaloes were still in the rice fields," he told AFP.

"Afterwards we found 72 houses were damaged. A few people were slightly injured and some cows were wounded too."

He said last year a similar storm destroyed 90 houses in the area. [...]

Back in the mid-1950s US President Dwight Eisenhower used to travel to the Fraser River in Colorado to spend his summers fishing for trout. He was such a regular visitor and an avid fisherman ­ typically casting a Red Quill fly ­ that the Byers Peak Ranch where he used to stay became known as the Western White House.

But now the Fraser River on which the President spent his afternoons fishing the cold, clear waters is imperiled like never before. Having long been plundered by the regional water board, the 30 mile stream was yesterday named in a report as one of the 10 most threatened rivers in the US.

"For years the Denver Water Board has siphoned 65 per cent of the Fraser River's water and piped it across the mountains to fuel runaway development," said the report by AmericanRivers.Org, a Washington-based environmental campaign group. "Now it plans to take most of the rest."

The 10 rivers highlighted by the group are spread across the US. While several are located in states known for their industry, such as Ohio, others are in the west and in the Rockies. The Fraser River forms in the snowfields of the nation's continental divide and flows 30 miles to the north and west before it joins the Colorado River, itself little more than a mountain stream at that stage.

The threat to the river is from over-extraction. In the years since President Eisenhower stayed in a lodge at the ranch overlooking the small town of Fraser, the Denver Water Board has been taking 65 per cent of the river's flow to meet the demands of burgeoning development in an area on the east of the mountains known as the Front Range. Now the board, the largest utility in the state, is to seek permission to extract up to 85 per cent of the river's flow.

Adam Cwiklin, a local councillor from Fraser, where people have launched a project to collect photographs, documents and oral histories relating to Eisenhower's visits, said the extraction was slowly killing the river. He said: "This is called the Fraser River Valley and there are several towns that depend on the river. Soon it may be that we no longer have a river, just a dry riverbed."

Over-extraction is just one of the problems affecting America's waterways. Yesterday's report highlighted a number of threats including pollution from development and factory farming, as well as the building of dams and reservoirs. One of the biggest problems was the release of untreated sewage. Last year more than 860bn gallons of untreated sewage was poured into US rivers, making millions of people ill and causing widespread environmental damage. At the same time the Bush administration is planning to lower clean water standards.

"All across America, rivers link one town's toilets to the next town's faucets," said Rebecca Wodder, president of AmericanRivers.Org. "And when it rains, sewage pours into those rivers, billions of gallons every year. [...]s

France faces its worst drought in 30 years, the environment ministry warned yesterday, saying parts of the country have received 90% less winter rainfall than normal and at least six areas have already introduced water rationing.

"We're ringing the alarm bells now, which is exceptional," said a ministry spokesman.

"Unless we start conserving resources immediately, things could start getting very difficult indeed this summer."

All of France's regions bar three - Alsace and Burgundy in the east and Languedoc-Roussillon in the south - are affected by the drought, the ministry said.

On average, some 30% less rain than normal has fallen in France since last October, while a broad swath of the Rhone valley from Valence to Nimes, Marseille and Toulon in the south is 75% to 90% down on its usual level.

According to the government hydrological office, which measures the volume of water in France's rivers, 86% of 778 readings revealed levels lower than half those normally recorded in April. In the Ardeche département, every major watercourse has already run dry, a phenomenon not usually encountered until August. In rainswept Brittany, the rivers have not been so low for 40 years.

"The month of March has reinforced the risk of drought in many of France's départements this summer," the ministry said in a statement. A government meteorologist, Michel Schneider, told Le Parisien that the scenario was "very similar" to 1976, one of the worst droughts in the last hundred years. "Unless we get more rainfall soon, we will be in a situation as critical as we were then," he said.

In 1976, France's stricken farmers could produce less than half their normal harvest; some 500km of riverbeds dried up and towns like Enghien scooped 500kg of dead fish a day from their all but empty lakes. Some 7 million French people suffered drinking water shortages; the army had to be called in to distribute hay to starving cattle; and an emergency "drought tax" was imposed to help the worst hit.

"The spring rainfall we're seeing at the moment is nowhere near enough to offset the shortfall," Mr Schneider said. "It won't top up the water tables because it won't get through the dried-out soil. It'll either evaporate or be absorbed by the parched spring vegetation."

Six départements, mainly in the south-west, have already barred farmers from irrigating their crops, banned the watering of public parks, golf courses and sports grounds, and ordered private individuals not to fill their swimming pools or wash their cars with hoses. France's farmers have also been urged to switch from crops like corn, which demand heavy irrigation, to alternatives like sunflowers or peas that consume less water.

The one glimmer of hope comes, unexpectedly, from Britain, where the Met Office has said that according to its statistics, this summer should be warm but also more than usually wet in France. Not many Frenchmen, however, are prepared to take London's word for it.

SYDNEY - Wheat farmer Xavier Martin stares at bare patches on the hills around his property in eastern Australia. The grass has died and even the trees are thinning out.

It has not rained properly for months. The drought that hit in 2002, Australia's worst in a century, is beginning to return.

Martin's 2,000 hectare (4,942 acres) farm at Gunnedah, in northwestern New South Wales, is on the edge of an expanding band of serious drought which the Australian weather bureau says has spread right across the centre of the country.

He is typical of Australia's 35,000 wheat farmers who are weighing up whether to plant big crops in the next few weeks or to play safe and plant small.

"You pick up the calculator more often than you normally would," Martin said. "I'm quite apprehensive about the season if we don't get a rain break by the end of May."

After a very dry start to the 2005/06 season, less than two weeks remain for most of Australia's grain growers to receive rain in time to set up a big crop. April 25 is the rule-of-thumb date which Australian farmers use to calculate whether enough rain has fallen to go for a big crop.

"It's dried up right through the wheat belt around Australia," Martin said.

They are synonymous with American power, conservatism and the projection of military might.

Now the names of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld have gained a second, somewhat less formidable connotation: two scientists have named a species of beetle after America's paramount triumvirate.

Quentin Wheeler and Kelly Miller, who had the task of naming 65 newly discovered species of slime-mould beetles, settled on Agathidium bushi, Agathidium cheneyi, and Agathidium rumsfeldi as names for three of them.

It is intended to pay homage to them, said Dr Wheeler, who taught at Cornell University for 24 years and now is the head of entomology at the Natural History Museum in London.

"We admire these leaders as fellow citizens who have the courage of their convictions and are willing to do the very difficult and unpopular work of living up to principles of freedom and democracy rather than accepting the expedient or popular," he said.

Climate change is playing havoc with the timing of the seasons and could drastically alter the landscape, according to one of the most comprehensive studies of its kind.

Frogs have begun spawning in Britain as early as October, oaks are coming into leaf three weeks earlier than they were 50 years ago and there were an unprecedented 4,000 sightings of bumblebees by the end of January this year.

Scientists, who also noted that people were mowing their lawns earlier, have concluded that spring now arrives ahead of schedule.

The findings were submitted to scientists at the UK Phenology Network by hundreds of paid observers across the country and have been combined with environmental data over three centuries. The study is bound to intensify calls for tighter controls on environmental pollution linked to climate change.

The report, published yesterday in the BBC Wildlife Magazine, provides startling evidence of how nature is reacting to rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns. Authors of the report have calculated that spring starts around six days earlier for every 1C temperature rise but not all species are affected in the same way.

For example for every 1C temperature rise, oak trees come into leaf 10 days earlier compared to four days earlier for the ash, its main competitor for space.

In an example of the ecological balance being upset, these changes also affect caterpillars, which are developing earlier to meet the need to feed on the trees' young leaves. This may also have an effect on the migratory patterns of birds that feed on the insects, which can more readily adapt to climate change.

"The findings suggest that there won't be a smooth progression towards a warmer climate, with all species advancing in unison, but rather that different responses may disrupt the complex linkages in nature," said Tim Sparks, one of the report's authors.

The authors predict more drastic changes if, as expected, global temperatures rise between 2C and 6C.

It is now warmer than at any point in the past 1,000 years and nine of the 10 warmest years have occurred in the past decade.

England's beech woods may disappear along with animals such as Scotland's capercaillie and snow bunting - both birds which prefer a cold environment.

The landscape may also change because of shifting rainfall patterns, more extreme weather and rising sea levels, the report predicts. Arable farming may migrate to the west as parts of East Anglia become too dry to cultivate.

"Climate change will affect our wildlife but nature is difficult to predict" said Mr Sparks. "What is clear is that we need to act now if we are able to help the natural world to survive and adapt to future change."

Under a warming climate, Britain may be invaded by new animals and plants. Among birds, the candidates include the black kite, cattle egret and hoopoe. There may also be new moths and butterflies, including the mazarine blue butterfly and the black-veined white butterfly.

More evidence of change

CRICKETS

The long-winged conehead, formerly restricted to the south coast, has moved 60 miles north.

RED ADMIRAL BUTTERFLY

A migrating species that is now spending the winter in the UK.

FROGS

Spawning has occurred before Christmas for several years in milder parts of Cornwall. Researchers have discovered dozens of cases in October and as far north as Northern Ireland.

BUMBLEBEES

Activity in winter is aided by exotic flowers but scientists have logged 4,000 reports of bees in January in what is called a "significant change" in behaviour.

DAFFODILS

Flowering is no longer restricted to spring with it being spotted on Christmas Day. There are similar changes with the white dead-nettle.

OAK TREES

In the past 50 years the oak has come into leaf three weeks earlier. In southern England leaves now emerge in late March.

GRASS

Now grows all year with 7 per cent of respondents to the survey in Scotland cutting their grass in winter.

We foresee an above-average hurricane season for the Atlantic basin in 2005. Also, an above-average probability of U.S. major hurricane landfall is anticipated.

We have adjusted our forecast upward from our early December forecast and may further raise our prediction in our later updates if we can be sure El Niño conditions will not develop.

PARIS - Heavy snowfall and torrential rain have caused serious disruption in much of eastern France, the south of Switzerland and across Italy, and may have contributed to a serious accident in Switzerland in which 12 people died when their a bus skidded off a wet road.

The Italian authorities have issued a nationwide warning, stressing the risk of avalanches in the Alps after heavy snowfalls and of downpours and gales in the south of the country caused by a deep depression centred on the Mediterranean.

Heavy snowfall in the French Alps and other southeastern regions left some 78,000 homes in the Rhone-Alpes region without power late Sunday as rainstorms also caused rivers to burst their banks, French authorities said. Earlier 145,000 households had been without power. [...]

CEDAR CITY, Utah - As the weather warms, this scenic high-desert town is rushing to make preparations before an enormous accumulation of waterlogged snow begins to melt in the mountains and creates a threat of spectacular flooding.

Crews have started raising the bed of a state highway and fortifying ditches, city officials are praying for gradual warming that would melt the snow slowly, and officials of two counties already have declared states of emergency they may not need for a month.

Snow has accumulated to as much as 372 percent of normal at some higher elevations, nearly 13 feet deep at some spots on the high sprawling plateau above Cedar City, home of more than 20,000 people and Southern Utah University.

"That snowpack - it's scary," City Manager Jim Allan said of Midway Valley, a 9,800-foot mountain saddle near Cedar Breaks National Monument, which is still snowed in. [...]

REGINA – Saskatchewan's utility restored power to about 3,000 buildings on Saturday, saying that only about 100 customers would remain in the dark for another day.

Strong winds and wet snow on Thursday night and early Friday morning toppled about 135 power poles in the province and at one point left about 10,000 people – mostly in rural areas – without electricity. [...]

A FREAK wave towering a reported 21 metres has struck a luxury cruise ship in the mid-Atlantic.

The ship, which can carry 2200 passengers, was forced into a South Carolina port for repairs after the drama at the weekend.

The 294m Norwegian Dawn was sailing for New York from Miami and the Bahamas when the wave struck, smashing two windows and flooding 62 cabins, said Norwegian Cruise Lines, the ship's owner.

Four passengers were injured with cuts and bruises.

The New York Daily News reported that the wave was 21m-high. [...]

Rogue waves like the one that slammed into the Norwegian Dawn yesterday are more common and more dangerous than scientists first thought.

The waves, which can reach 15 to 80 feet high, have been responsible for the loss of more than 200 ships - including giant tankers and container vessels - in the past 20 years.

They also have caused damage to countless others, contradicting the long-held belief that only rare meteorological events could create the moving mountains of water. In fact, radar-based images last summer revealed 10 such waves in just a three-week period in the Atlantic Ocean.

In January, one such renegade wave smashed into the research vessel Explorer carrying nearly 1,000 people, including hundreds of students on a semester at sea program about 1,300 miles southwest of Anchorage in the Pacific Ocean. [...]

SEOUL - South Korea's state weather agency said on Tuesday it is considering issuing a nationwide alert from Wednesday as it forecasts a strong sandstorm will blow in from China over coming days.

The Korea Meteorological Administration said the "yellow dust" dust storm expected to be the heaviest one so far this year will likely hit South Korea on Wednesday morning.

The storm, which is approaching from China's inner Mongolian region, has a dust density of 9,068 micrograms per cubic meter, KMA said.

KMA issues a yellow dust alert when the dust density in the air surpasses 1,000 micrograms per cubic meter for more than two hours.

The alert advises senior citizens, children and people with breathing difficulty to stay indoors.

The yellow dust storms, which carry sand and industrial pollution, originate from the Gobi Desert in the Chinese-Mongolian border region and, driven by strong spring winds, affects regions as far west as Japan.

WINNIPEG ­ A roofing company in Swan River has been blown away by the number of calls for help it's received after a severe windstorm in the area.

Strong winds blasted the area for more than a full day last Friday, with wind speeds sometimes surpassing 100 kilometres an hour.

Dale Anderson of Kendale Roofing says he has never seen a storm like it in the 30 years he's been working on roofs. [...]

WHITEHORSE - Temperatures were warmer than normal over the winter in the Yukon. Climatologists said the trend could continue for the next century, reinforcing the territory's reputation as an international focus for climate change.

Environment Canada said temperatures for the winter months in the Yukon were anywhere from one to four degrees above what was considered normal.

The balmy trend has been consistent for the last nine years. A map of the country showing temperature changes shows the greatest increase in warmth over the Yukon.

"The weather service is still compiling figures from over the winter. But it looks like much of the winter was substantially warmer than normal," said Bob Van Dijken of the Northern Climate Change Office in Whitehorse, a group that educates, monitors, and helps develop responses to climate change.

Van Dijken said the trend appears to be caused by complex weather patterns giving the Yukon and adjacent areas the most dramatic temperature changes in the world.

The territory has a reputation for being the first to experience climate change, with the worst impacts, he added.

Not only was atmospheric oxygen content dropping at the end of the Permian, the scientists said, but carbon dioxide levels were rising, leading to global climate warming.

The biggest mass extinction in Earth history some 251 million years ago was preceded by elevated extinction rates before the main event and was followed by a delayed recovery that lasted for millions of years.

New research by two University of Washington scientists suggests that a sharp decline in atmospheric oxygen levels was likely a major reason for both the elevated extinction rates and the very slow recovery.

Earth's land at the time was still massed in a supercontinent called Pangea, and most of the land above sea level became uninhabitable because low oxygen made breathing too difficult for most organisms to survive, said Raymond Huey, a UW biology professor.

What's more, in many cases nearby populations of the same species were cut off from each other because even low-altitude passes had insufficient oxygen to allow animals to cross from one valley to the next.

That population fragmentation likely increased the extinction rate and slowed recovery following the mass extinction, Huey said.

"Biologists have previously thought about the physiological consequences of low oxygen levels during the late Permian period, but not about these biogeographical ones," he said.

Atmospheric oxygen content, about 21 percent today, was a very rich 30 percent in the early Permian period.

However, previous carbon-cycle modeling by Robert Berner at Yale University has calculated that atmospheric oxygen began plummeting soon after, reaching about 16 percent at the end of the Permian and bottoming out at less than 12 percent about 10 million years into the Triassic period.

"Oxygen dropped from its highest level to its lowest level ever in only 20 million years, which is quite rapid, and animals that once were able to cross mountain passes quite easily suddenly had their movements severely restricted," Huey said.

He calculated that when the oxygen level hit 16 percent, breathing at sea level would have been like trying to breathe at the summit of a 9,200-foot mountain today.

By the early Triassic period, sea-level oxygen content of less than 12 percent would have been the same as it is today in the thin air at 17,400 feet, higher than any permanent human habitation. That means even animals at sea level would have been oxygen challenged.

Huey and UW paleontologist Peter Ward are authors of a paper detailing the work, published in the April 15 edition of the journal Science.

The work was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Astrobiology Institute.

Not only was atmospheric oxygen content dropping at the end of the Permian, the scientists said, but carbon dioxide levels were rising, leading to global climate warming.

"Declining oxygen and warming temperatures would have been doubly stressful for late Permian animals," Huey said.

"As the climate warms, body temperatures and metabolic rates go up. That means oxygen demand is going up, so animals would face an increased oxygen demand and a reduced supply. It would be like forcing athletes to exercise more but giving them less food. They'd be in trouble."

Ward was lead author of a paper published in Science earlier this year presenting evidence that extinction rates of land vertebrates were elevated throughout the late Permian, likely because of climate change, and culminated in a mass extinction at the end of the Permian.

The event, often called "the Great Dying," was the greatest mass extinction in Earth's history, killing 90 percent of all marine life and nearly three-quarters of land plants and animals.

Ward said paleontologists had previously assumed that Pangea was not just a supercontinent but also a "superhighway" on which species would have encountered few roadblocks while moving from one place to another.

However, it appears the greatly reduced oxygen actually created impassable barriers that affected the ability of animals to move and survive, he said.

"If this is true, then I think we have to go back and look at oxygen and its role in evolution and how different species developed," Ward said.

"You can go without food for a couple of weeks. You can go without water for a few days. How long can you go without oxygen, a couple of minutes? There's nothing with a greater evolutionary effect than oxygen."

KAMPONG SPEU, Cambodia: The worst drought to hit Cambodia in 50 years has left farmers like Sopheap Penh with nothing but despair as he stares at his barren fields.

"My animals are sick, my fields and the river have been dry for months. We can't hold on for long like this," he says.

The Prek Tkmaout river, which a few months ago irrigated all the fields in Kampong Speu province, west of Phnom Penh, has run dry and left hundreds of hectares (acres) of dusty rice paddies and fields.

With no rain since October, some provinces are baking in 40-degree Celsius (104-degree Fahrenheit) heat, evaporating what little water remains.

"The drought is so bad these last months that we have lost our entire harvest. It's a disaster," says Ta Mom, chief of Paing Lovea village, in Kampong Speu, one of the kingdom's hardest-hit provinces.

"At least 537,340 tonnes of rice has been lost this year on the two million hectares (4.9 million acres) cultivated in Cambodia. That's an enormous shortfall that will hurt the country in the months to come," says Nhim Vandha, deputy director of the national disaster management agency.

"The rice stored in reserves won't be enough to feed the entire population if a humanitarian crisis occurs," he says, describing the drought as the worst in 50 years.

"Only the rain can save us."

Fourteen of Cambodia's 24 provinces have been hit by drought, or about 289 communities. [...]

VLADIVOSTOK, - A powerful cyclone from South East Asia brought last night hurricane winds with gusts up to 30 meters per second and downpours to the Primorye Territory. It will swoop down on the Khabarovsk Territory and the Amur Region over the next few days. Wind gusts tore away house roofs in Vladivostok. Window glasses were smashed in many houses.

Several flights were stranded at the Vladivostok airport over hurricane winds. The Primorye weather center told Tass on Wednesday that two cyclones – from China and Mongolia – approached Primorye last night. They joined into a powerful whirlwind over the territory. The cyclone will rage up to April 24.

A storm warning was also flashed out in the Amur Region. Heavy precipitations in the form of rain and wet snow may aggravate the flood situation in the south of the Russian Far East.

BEIJING (AP) - A tornado tore apart houses in two towns in eastern China, killing seven people and injuring more than 80 others, a news report said Thursday.

The tornados hit two counties on the outskirts of Yancheng, a city in Jiangsu province northwest of Shanghai, on Wednesday afternoon, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The report said Xinhua reporters who visited the village of Dazhi, one of the hardest-hit areas, found "half of the houses at the village collapsed and the only township hospital crowded with some 60 villagers waiting for treatment.''

(Panaji): Thunder squalls and rainstorm hit Goa this evening snapping power supply in most parts of the state and causing widespread damage to properties.

However, there were no reports of any loss of human life.

As a result of raging winds, billboards and metal roofs came crashing down and hampered visibility considerably.

The entire state capital was plunged into darkness after power went off as several tress and electricity poles were uprooted. Some trees were uprooted in Raj Bhavan causing some damage. [...]

WASHINGTON, April 20 (Reuters) - U.S. government weather forecasters issued a drought alert on Wednesday for areas of Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia which face widespread crop losses and food shortages.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said its weather satellites detected "areas of stifling drought conditions" in parts of the three countries for the sixth consecutive year.

"If the drought continues, any hope of success for a decent early-stage agricultural season in the Horn (of Africa) would be seriously at risk," said Felix Kogan of NOAA's Office of Research and Applications. "We are issuing a drought alert to notify humanitarian and relief agencies of these potentially deadly conditions so that hopefully lives can be saved."

Conditions are worst in eastern Kenya, southeastern Ethiopia and northern and central Somalia, NOAA said. That region typically grows food from March through May to sustain local residents until the autumn, when the next harvest occurs. [...]

Extrapolating from a survey conducted in two areas of Niger hard hit by locust infestation and scanty rains, a United Nations agency estimates that nearly 350,000 children younger than 5 could be suffering from malnutrition, with the risk of stunted growth.

The study in the Zinder and Maradi regions of the West African nation suggests that 346,000 children could suffer from malnutrition this year, with 63,000 of them suffering severely, the World Food Programme (WFP) said in the capital, Niamey.

"Following a season of poor rains, coupled with the impact of the worst locust invasion in 15 years, the situation is likely to get worse before it gets better. Niger is facing a food deficit of nearly a quarter of a million metric tons this year," it said. [...]

Overall, retreating glaciers have lost an average of 600m in 50 years
The glaciers of the Antarctic Peninsula are in rapid retreat.

A detailed study reported in Science magazine shows nearly 90% of the ice bodies streaming down from the mountains to the ocean are losing mass.

But the authors - a joint team from the British-Antarctic and US-Geological Surveys - say the big melt could have a number of complex causes.

Although higher air temperatures are a factor, they say, the full picture may go beyond just simple global warming.

"The overall picture is of glaciers retreating in a pattern that suggests the most important factor is atmospheric warming; we can connect the retreat with the observed warming recorded at climate stations along the peninsula," explained Dr David Vaughan, from the British Antarctic Survey (Bas).

"But it's not a perfect fit; there seem to be other factors involved as well - possibly to do with changing ocean currents and temperatures," he told BBC News.

The study covers 244 marine glaciers found largely on the western side of the peninsula.

They are all relatively small, independent streams of ice that fall from an altitude of about 2,000m down to sea level. Their fronts either ground and calve icebergs into the ocean, or push out into the water as a floating "tongue".

The team used more than 2,000 aerial photographs dating from 1940, and over 100 satellite images from the 1960s onwards, to assess the change in position of glacier fronts over time.

Bas scientist Alison Cook, who led the research, said: "This is the first comprehensive study of marine glaciers on the Antarctic Peninsula,"

'Shrinking rapidly'

"We found that 87% of the 244 glaciers have shown retreat since the earliest records, which on average were 1953.

"This is a reverse of the pattern 50 years ago - then most glaciers were actually growing. Now the majority are shrinking and rapidly." [...]

FAIRBANKS -- The National Weather Service is warning that conditions are right this spring for a dynamic breakup in Alaska's Interior.

Computers are telling meteorologists and hydrologists that breakup this year could involve flooding, ice jams and significant erosion in fire-ravaged areas.

Record-setting snow depths and water-content measurements have hydrologists warning of the potential for spring floods along several major Interior rivers.

"They should be getting prepared," said Scott Lindsey, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service's Alaska-Pacific River Forecast Center. "There is a potential for what the villages call 'spring flooding,' when the snowmelt ends up causing flooding after the actual breakup." [...]

The numbers coming out of their formulas are striking. For instance, the "volume flow forecast" for the Yukon River around Stevens Village is 116 percent of normal for April through July, McClure said. That means enough water will flow by the village to cover 48.2 million acres of land with 1 foot of water, a measurement hydrologists call acre-feet.

"Forty-eight million acres is about the size of South Dakota," McClure said.

McClure said some of the most impressive measurements came along the Yukon River near the Dalton Highway crossing, where water content was measured at 180 to 190 percent above normal, and in the White Mountains, where water content was 150 percent.

The Chena River basin also has significant water content, according to John Schaake of the Chena River Lakes Flood Control Project. Schaake said there is enough water contained in snow and ice to cover the basin to a depth of 6 1/2 inches.

LVOV, -- A snow cyclone left about 400 Ukrainian settlements without electricity on Saturday.

Automatic systems cut off electricity in five western and central Ukrainian regions when wet snow covered the high-voltage electro-transmission lines, the press service of the Ministry of Emergencies told Itar-Tass.

Electricity was cut off to residential areas in the Vinnitsa, Zhitomir, Kiev, Chernigov and Khmelnitsky regions.

Meteorologists say it will stop snowing and raining in the next few days, but it will become colder all over the country.

Authorities in Kiev, Lvov and other cities said heat supply would be resumed.

(New Zealand) - The country's Indian summer was blasted away at the weekend as a cold front swept up New Zealand.

Snow covered the Desert Rd, a 71-year-old yachtsman had to be winched to safety from a boat off Stewart Island, and an Interislander ferry carrying 676 passengers lost power in 4m swells near the entrance to Tory Channel in the Marlborough Sounds, where the MetService said winds reached 75km/h.

Last night the agency said swells in Cook Strait were bigger still at 8.3m. The Arahura took seven hours to complete the crossing, almost twice as long as usual.

The Maritime Safety Authority is investigating the breakdown. It had put emergency services - including the Rescue Co-ordination Centre and the Westpac rescue helicopter - on standby after the captain issued a "pan-pan", a call indicating a potentially serious situation, as it headed into the channel.

Marble-sized hailstones fell in Christchurch, turning the city white.

Temperatures dived from a balmy 19C on Saturday afternoon to just 4C by evening, rising yesterday to a high of 8C.

And the weather is likely to get worse.

The MetService issued strong wind warnings across the South Island and parts of the lower North Island, and four snow warnings for the central and lower North Island.

Snow was expected to affect many lower and central North Island roads overnight, including the Desert Rd, State Highway 1 north of Hunterville and the Gentle Annie and Napier-Taupo roads.

A further 15 gale and storm warnings were issued for marine areas, with Canterbury told to expect heavy thundery showers and more hail.

The blustery conditions were expected to move on to the lower North Island last night and spread up the east coast to Gisborne.

Bob McDavitt of MetService said the cold snap would sweep across the country, also bringing showers to much of Auckland and Northland. [...]

More than a month after spring's official start, winter is coming back to the Midwest for a visit.

Snow began falling in parts of the region Saturday, with up to 1 foot expected in eastern Michigan and northern Ohio by tonight, according to the National Weather Service. Temperatures will be well below normal with a freeze warning posted into this morning for much of Ohio and winds gusting to 35 mph.

Spring began March 20.

In Detroit, snow was mixed with rain for much of the morning, changing over to snow before noon.

The Detroit Tigers postponed their afternoon game against the Minnesota Twins at Comerica Park, while college baseball and softball games across southeast Michigan also were postponed or canceled.

Detroit and surrounding communities were expected to get 5 to 8 inches through this evening. [...]

(Kentucky) - The National Weather Service confirmed early yesterday that a tornado briefly touched down in downtown Louisville on Friday night.

The storm produced damage along Campbell Street south of the Ohio River. The weather service said witnesses saw a funnel cloud form over the river between 6:40 and 6:45 p.m.

The funnel cloud became a tornado at 6:47 p.m. near Campbell and Market streets, where a business's roof was destroyed. An empty 18-wheel tractor-trailer flipped a block away to the northeast. [...]

UP to 40 people have been killed by a flood in eastern Ethiopia.
"Many are still hanging on to trees for dear life," Mohammed Admi Abdi, district administrator of West Emi in Ogaden province, said by telephone today.

He said the Wabe Shabelle river had burst its banks after 48 hours of continuous heavy rain, flooding or washing away 35 villages in one of the most remote regions of the Horn of Africa country of more than 60 million.

Government officials and voluntary organisations were trying to move the survivors by helicopter, as all roads leading to the area, 700km east of Addis Ababa, were under water and impassable.

"The flood caught the people in 35 villages along the banks unawares," Mr Abdi said.

"Up to 40 died in their sleep, while those were were awake were able to escape."

He said officials of the government, the United Nations and voluntary organisations were meeting in the Ogaden capital of Gode to plan relief operations.

Ethiopia, which was hit by intense droughts during the 1980s that killed nearly a million people, is in the midst of a rainy season.

MOOSONEE - Nearly 200 people have been flown out of a remote reserve in northern Ontario after flooding filled dozens of basements with raw sewage and contaminated the water.

Hundreds more people could be forced to flee within days if the problems continue in Kashechewan First Nation, on the coast of James Bay.

Spring flooding on the Albany River caused reserve's sewage system to back up, dumping sewage into 39 basements and contaminating the water system.

The people whose homes were affected were flown to Moosonee, Ont., on Saturday. [...]

If the problems persist, some of the remaining 1,400 residents could be flown out of the community within a few days.

BOSTON- Residents in western Massachusetts are being advised to brace for possible flooding.

The National Weather Service in Taunton this morning issued a flood watch for the Connecticut River, which runs through dozens of cities and towns in Franklin, Hampden and Hampshire counties.

The river is expected to rise above flood stage tonight and early tomorrow morning.

The watch remains in effect until Tuesday morning. [...]

FLOODING at a coal mine in north-east China has trapped 69 workers, the state news agency reported.

Citing "local sources", Xinhua said the incident occurred in Jiaohe, Jilin province.

Xinhua said the miners were working at the bottom of Tengda Coal.
They have remained out of contact since then, it said.

The licensed mine is run by the local township, the agency said.

An intense rescue operation was underway and the cause of the flooding was under investigation, it said.

Official figures show more than 6,000 miners died in accidents last year but independent estimates say the real figure could be up to 20,000. [...]

HOT SPRINGS — The ranchers of Fall River County have enough to worry about with drought stunting growth in their pastures.

Now, an early season grasshopper has begun eating new grass on rangeland west of Hot Springs.

The band-wing grasshopper, known scientifically as pardalophora haldemani, began showing up in large numbers in Minnekahta Valley west of Hot Springs last year, according to Mark Fanning, Fall River County Extension educator for agronomy.

The hopper, sometimes called Haldeman's grasshopper, is not the normal grasshopper commonly seen in South Dakota later in the season. It overwinters and, in fact, can survive being frozen solid, Fanning said.

The nymphs from last year's eggs have become grasshoppers and are already eating the new growth, he said. "This particular type eats primarily range grasses. They are a problem because they eat what little grass we've got going."

Fall River County, one of the areas hit hardest by drought last year, has received little moisture this year. [...]

A key tourist attraction in Dominica, the usually bubbling crater is calm, and sometimes the water drains away. No one knows what to expect.

LAUDAT, Dominica — Boiling Lake, this Caribbean island's most exotic tourist lure, has ceased to simmer.

For nearly four months, the volcanic crater's usually bubbling brew has been calm, except for brief surges when water inexplicably drains away, then rises again. The temperature rises and falls, sometimes hot enough to send up steam clouds, other times so tepid that adventurous visitors have dared to swim in it. The color has varied from gray-green to alabaster, and, most recently, black as coal.
 
The mysterious changes have scientists scratching their heads and hikers skipping the seven-hour round-trip trek that many found adventurous enough without added risks.

"The lake has stopped boiling at times in the past, but what worries us about this case is that the changes are drastic and really, really fast," said Nicolas Fournier, a volcanologist with the Seismic Research Unit of the University of the West Indies in Trinidad and Tobago.

The 200-foot-wide lake is a crater filled by underground rivulets and rainwater and heated by volcanic gases.

Since the boiling stopped in late December, the water level has fluctuated, dropping as much as 40 feet, leaving a sludgy pool of gray sediment on the bottom and a ring of mineral residue. Water normally so hot that it can cook an egg in five minutes cooled to a tepid 68 degrees in January, when a party of Austrian hikers ventured in.

Boiling Lake has baffled Dominicans before. In 1887, 1900, 1971 and 1988, the lake water calmed and drained away through the fumaroles that funnel heat from beneath the crusted lava lake bed. But each time, the water level and temperature returned to normal within a few weeks.

Fournier speculates that a magnitude 6.3 earthquake north of Dominica on Nov. 21 caused the thick mineral sediment on the lake floor to shift and clog the fissures from which volcanic heat had been reaching the water.

But he is at a loss to explain why the water level has been fluctuating so dramatically. [...]

Severe weather rolled into the area this afternoon, dumping heavy rain and hail as it moved quickly from west to east and possibly spawning a tornado in Tarrant County.

Storm spotters said a tornado touched down in the vicinity of Interstates 20 and 35W. However, Ft. Worth Fire Lt. Kent Worley said they had not found any confirmed reports of damage or injury.

A heavy concentration of hail fell on Cedar Hill and Duncanville in southern Dallas County, accumulating in some areas and looking almost like snow in several residents' yards.

Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport was reporting delays of 45 minutes to an hour for most arriving flights due to the storms, and officials said at least 22 flights had been canceled as a result. [...]

WASHINGTON - A comprehensive survey of Antarctic glaciers shows the continent is melting worse than thought.

The three-year study by scientists from the British Antarctic Survey and U.S. Geological Survey used more than 2,000 aerial and satellite photographs. They document how 87 per cent of 244 glaciers have retreated over the past 50 years.

Glacier-ice shelves are floating glaciers that remain connected to the land, while tidewater glaciers rest on rock off the ocean.

"These glacier retreat patterns combined with dramatic ice shelf break-ups leave us in no doubt that the Antarctic Peninsula ice sheet is extremely sensitive to recent warming," said British glaciologist David Vaugan.

"What we still need to determine is whether or not the warming in this area has its roots in human-influenced global warming," he added in a statement.

Glacier retreat is important to the world's environment because it could allow more ice to drain further inland, contributing to a rise in sea levels.

Researchers found atmospheric temperatures rose more than 2.5 C along the Antarctic Peninsula, a narrow chain of mountains south of South America.

In the last half-century, the trend to glacier retreat moved south toward the mainland, the team found.

The jump in temperatures is five times the average for Antarctica.

Warmer winds from changes in atmospheric circulation as well as human-induced climate change could be causing the glacier retreat.

The study appears in the April 22 issue of the journal Science

PORT AU CHOIX, NFLD. - At least 1,700 seal carcasses have washed ashore along parts of Newfoundland's northern peninsula, prompting federal officials to investigate.

Ron Burton, of Fisheries and Oceans, said Monday that the department has received reports of that many carcasses near Port au Choix ­ and they fear more will be discovered.

Fisheries officials are in the area to find out how many seals died and how big an area was affected.

Although they're still trying to determine the cause, they suspect the seals were crushed by ice in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Burton said it's not uncommon for younger seals to be killed after getting caught in heavy ice.

"It seems to be a majority of young seals ­ whitecoats ­ which is typical of an 'ice kill,'" Burton said.

"We've had some fairly strong wind events in the area the last few weeks ... and what happens is that these animals get caught in the ice as it's blowing around and they end up getting crushed."

Burton said dead seals periodically wash up on shore weeks after a big storm.

It happened in Bonne Bay within the last few years, he said, but fewer seals died in that incident.

BUCHAREST, April 26 (AFP) - Flash floods in western Romania have damaged thousands of homes and swamped vast stretches of farmland, leading Bucharest to declare a regional state of emergency on Tuesday.

More than 140 towns in the north and west of the country have been hit by several days of flooding, with swollen rivers destroying several bridges.

President Traian Basescu travelled to the worst-hit Timis region, where the rains have wrecked more than 1,300 homes and 30,000 hectares (75,000 acres) of farmland, pledging 60 million euros (77 million dollars) of aid to the region. [...]

Fears over increase in skin cancer as scientists report that climate change continues to destroy the earth's protection

The protective ozone layer over the Arctic has thinned this winter to the lowest levels since records began, alarming scientists who believed it had begun to heal.

The increased loss of ozone allows more harmful ultraviolet light to reach the earth's surface, making children and outdoor enthusiasts such as skiers more vulnerable to skin cancer - a disease which is already dramatically increasing.

Scientists yesterday reinforced the warning that people going out in the sun this summer should protect themselves with creams and hats.

Research by Cambridge University shows that it is not increased pollution but a side effect of climate change that is making ozone depletion worse. At high altitudes, 50% of the protective layer had been destroyed.

The research has dashed hopes that the ozone layer was on the mend. Since the winter of 1999-2000, when depletion was almost as bad, scientists had believed an improvement was under way as pollution was reduced. But they now believe it could be another 50 years before the problem is solved.

What appears to have caused the further loss of ozone is the increasing number of stratospheric clouds in the winter, 15 miles above the earth. These clouds, in the middle of the ozone layer, provide a platform which makes it easier for rapid chemical reactions which destroy ozone to take place. This year, for three months from the end of November, there were more clouds for longer periods than ever previously recorded.

Cambridge University scientists said yesterday that, in late March, when ozone depletion was at its worst, Arctic air masses drifted over the UK and the rest of Europe as far south as northern Italy, giving significantly higher doses of ultraviolet radiation and sunburn risk.

The results, which were announced at a Geophysical Union meeting in Vienna yesterday, are part of a European venture coordinated by Cambridge University's chemistry department, which has been studying the relationship between the ozone layer and climate change since May 2004.

Yesterday, Professor John Pyle, from the university, said: "These were were the lowest levels of ozone recorded since measurements began 40 years ago. We thought things would start to get better because of the phasing out of CFCs and other chemicals because of the Montreal protocol, but this has not happened.

"The pollution levels have levelled off but changes in the atmosphere have made it easier for the chemical reactions to take place that allow pollutants to destroy ozone. With these changes likely to continue and get worse as global warming increases, then ozone will be further depleted even if the level of pollution is going down."

The relationship between the depletion of the ozone layer and climate change is so complex that the EU is investing £11m in a five-year project to try to understand and predict what is happening. Reporting the results of the first year, the scientists told the meeting in Vienna yesterday that "the atmospheric lifetime of these [ozone depleting] compounds is extremely long and the concentrations will remain at dangerously high levels for another half century."

BANDA ACEH : Flash floods swept through a village in the tsunami-stricken Indonesian province of Aceh, leaving nine people dead and 20 missing, residents and officials said Wednesday.

The floods, which destroyed about 30 homes in the village of Lawe Mengkudu in southeastern Aceh late Tuesday night, were caused when a river burst its banks after a day of heavy rain.

Erizal, of the Southeast Aceh district police, said nine bodies including that of a paramilitary officer, had been recovered by 2:30 pm (0730 GMT)Wednesday. About 18 people were injured, he said.

Another policeman on duty at the same office, Burhanuddin, said about 20 people were missing.

Residents said rescue workers were still sifting through the debris and mud to find survivors. [...]

SANAA - Flash floods have killed at least 10 people in Yemen and destroyed acres of agricultural land in the poor Arab state, officials said on Wednesday. They said tens of houses were also destroyed by rushing water in the past two days after heavy rains lashed several parts of the country.

"There has been a lot of damage to property due to heavy rain in the last week," one official said, adding that it was too early to provide accurate estimates of material damage.

Yemen, at the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula, is prone to floods during spring and summer. The worst rains hit Yemen in 1996 and officials at the time estimated damage at $1.2 billion.

ADDIS ABABA (AP) - Some 82 people died in floods that swept eastern Ethiopia on the weekend and the death toll will rise further unless help gets to survivors soon, the government's relief co-ordinator said Wednesday.

Tens of thousands of people were left homeless when the Wabe Shebelle river in the eastern Somali region burst its banks on Saturday after two days of heavy rains, crashing through 40 villages and sweeping families away, said relief co-ordinator Muktar Mohammed Seyyid.

"This is a catastrophe," Muktar said by telephone from the region. "If we don't take action, I am afraid the death toll will increase."

Muktar said if the rains continue - forecasters expect thunderstorms will continue into the weekend - further deaths could occur from flooding.

"Even now there are still people in trees because they are afraid of crocodiles," he told the Associated Press by telephone from the worst affected area, Gode.

Some plastic sheeting and high-energy biscuits have arrived in the region but as yet rescuers have been unable to get them to survivors, said Ahmed Abdi of the UN's World Food Program.

He said many areas still remain cut off.

Madurai, : A tsunami scare was caused as sea water inundated a coastal area in Tuticorin last evening, submerging nearly 300 huts and forcing the residents to move to safer places.

The water entered the huts at Inigo Nagar, 200 metres from the coastline, submerging them. However, the water receded after three hours.

According to villagers, waves gushing in till 100 metres from coastline was a normal phenomenon during full moon days.

However, last night the sea seemed to be abnormally rough.

"We have enough expertise to study the waves during daytime. But if it is night, we will be in trouble. We have lost peace of mind since the tsunami tragedy and the vagaries of the sea," a villager said.

(Australia) - After three years of continued drought, Cootamundra farmers have been hit with another blow - one of the driest April's on record combined with unseasonably hot weather.

The continued dry weather has meant several grain farmers have had to dry sow their winter crops to ensure they are not affected by the delayed break.

Farmers with livestock have also felt the pinch, with many cutting down on their yarding numbers and handfeeding remaining stock.

With hopes for sufficient autumn rains quickly fading, farmers are looking at another year of failed crops and shortage of grazing pasture.

Cootamundra has only recorded 4.6 millimetres during April, well below the month's average of 49.9 millimetres. [...]

MADRID: Spain has suffered its driest winter and early spring since records began almost 60 years ago, data from meteorologists showed on Friday.

Rainfall from November to the end of March this year was 37 per cent below the average for the period and the lowest since records started in 1947, the National Meteorological Office said.

With water reserves in Spain at just 60 per cent of full capacity, farmers fearing water rationing say they are planting fewer crops.

Neighbouring Portugal is suffering its worst drought for 25 years and authorities there have imposed irrigation restrictions in the south, a popular tourist destination.

QUEBEC CITY - Heavy rains across Quebec and New Brunswick have brought flooding and forced dozens of families out of their homes.

Some areas have received as much as 100 millimetres of rainfall in the past week. Environment Canada's heavy rainfall warning was lifted on Friday, but the downpours have not stopped.

Rivers across Quebec are overflowing and the rain has caused landslides and washed out roads.

In the village of Petite-Rivière-St-François, north of Quebec City, more than two dozen families have been forced out of their homes. [...]

Scattered thunderstorms brought showers to parts of the Tennessee Valley and southern Plains Friday, while light rain and scattered snow showers lingered across the central Rockies.

The most severe storms were in northern Arkansas, where 1.75 inches of hail fell in White and Lanoke counties and Russellville recorded 1.2 inches of rain.

Thunderstorms were also reported across the Tennessee Valley and lower Mississippi Valley, while light rain fell in portions of the Northeast, Ohio Valley and Mid-Atlantic. Rain totals generally remained under .4 inches.

The Great Lakes, Deep South and central Plains were mostly dry under partly cloudy skies.

In the West, the central Rockies saw light isolated rain showers and a few snow showers. Up to 6 inches of snow were recorded in elevations about 6,000 feet.

Light rain also fell in parts of the Pacific Northwest, while the northern Rockies, Great Basin, California and the Desert Southwest enjoyed partly cloudy skies and dry conditions.

Friday's temperatures around the Lower 48 states ranged from a low of 6 degrees in West Yellowstone, Wyo., to a midday high of 92 degrees in Laredo, Texas.

BUCHAREST - Heavy rains in western Romania have flooded hundreds of villages, forcing 3,700 people to abandon their homes and disrupting rail and road traffic, the Environment Ministry said on Friday.

Television stations showed army helicopters and national guard dinghies arriving at disaster areas to evacuate shivering victims from what authorities called the worst floods in 50 years.

"I lost everything. My pigs drowned and I couldn't rescue them after my house crumbled in the water," said an elderly peasant from Otelec, where floods were two meters deep.

Up to 2,000 people, mostly from Timis county at the border with Serbia and Montenegro, were displaced to temporary shelters on nearby highlands. They are likely to stay there until at least Sunday, the Orthodox Easter.

But TV reports said many were risking their lives to defend saturated homes from looters by taking refuge in their lofts, which were liable to collapse at any moment.

In the city of Arad, near the border with Hungary, apartment blocks and streets were flooded, with stranded residents forced to use dinghies for transport.

The Environment Ministry said the floods were partly caused by broken 300-year-old dams on the Timis river but that waters were now beginning to ebb. [...]

Prime Minister Calin Tariceanu, who visited the flood-affected areas, said the government would rebuild destroyed houses with materials from the state reserves. The houses are expected to be ready by the winter.

The government has allocated 500 billion lei ($18 million) to repair the collapsed railway infrastructure and 280 billion for the dams. Some 30 billion will also go toward vaccines to prevent epidemics spreading, emergency food and basic supplies. [...]

The government had yet to present an overall assessment of the damage, but the farm ministry said 110,000 hectares (271,800 acres) of wheat, barley, sunflower and vegetables fields had so far been damaged at an estimated financial loss of 300 billion lei.

Giant waves have been lashing some parts of Andhra Pradesh coast leading to panic, but experts have assured people that there is no threat of another tsunami.

Six to seven ft tall waves struck Uppada beach, about 20 km from the port town of Kakinada in East Godavari district, on Thursday. People living in other coastal villages in Prakasam district also experienced the unusually high tidal waves.

No loss of life or property was reported. [...]

Brigham City leaders have declared a state of emergency as they prepare for a few more days of heavy rain and flooding.

BRIGHAM CITY-(KSL News) -- Brigham City has declared a state of emergency because of the flooding.

"The reservoir is filling into the mayor's pond which is spilling into the Box Elder Creek."

Mayor Lou Ann Christensen says they've let water go into irrigation canals and onto the golf course so it doesn't clog the creek any more.

The city's emergency services director says the rain is what's causing this flooding.

Brigham City leaders have declared a state of emergency as they prepare for a few more days of heavy rain and flooding.

BRIGHAM CITY-(KSL News) -- Brigham City has declared a state of emergency because of the flooding.

"The reservoir is filling into the mayor's pond which is spilling into the Box Elder Creek."

Mayor Lou Ann Christensen says they've let water go into irrigation canals and onto the golf course so it doesn't clog the creek any more.

The city's emergency services director says the rain is what's causing this flooding.

QUEBEC CITY - Heavy rains across Quebec and New Brunswick have brought flooding and forced dozens of families out of their homes.

Some areas have received as much as 100 millimetres of rainfall in the past week. Environment Canada's heavy rainfall warning was lifted on Friday, but the downpours have not stopped.

Rivers across Quebec are overflowing and the rain has caused landslides and washed out roads.

In the village of Petite-Rivière-St-François, north of Quebec City, more than two dozen families have been forced out of their homes. [...]

Scattered thunderstorms brought showers to parts of the Tennessee Valley and southern Plains Friday, while light rain and scattered snow showers lingered across the central Rockies.

The most severe storms were in northern Arkansas, where 1.75 inches of hail fell in White and Lanoke counties and Russellville recorded 1.2 inches of rain.

Thunderstorms were also reported across the Tennessee Valley and lower Mississippi Valley, while light rain fell in portions of the Northeast, Ohio Valley and Mid-Atlantic. Rain totals generally remained under .4 inches.

The Great Lakes, Deep South and central Plains were mostly dry under partly cloudy skies.

In the West, the central Rockies saw light isolated rain showers and a few snow showers. Up to 6 inches of snow were recorded in elevations about 6,000 feet.

Light rain also fell in parts of the Pacific Northwest, while the northern Rockies, Great Basin, California and the Desert Southwest enjoyed partly cloudy skies and dry conditions.

Friday's temperatures around the Lower 48 states ranged from a low of 6 degrees in West Yellowstone, Wyo., to a midday high of 92 degrees in Laredo, Texas.

BUCHAREST - Heavy rains in western Romania have flooded hundreds of villages, forcing 3,700 people to abandon their homes and disrupting rail and road traffic, the Environment Ministry said on Friday.

Television stations showed army helicopters and national guard dinghies arriving at disaster areas to evacuate shivering victims from what authorities called the worst floods in 50 years.

"I lost everything. My pigs drowned and I couldn't rescue them after my house crumbled in the water," said an elderly peasant from Otelec, where floods were two meters deep.

Up to 2,000 people, mostly from Timis county at the border with Serbia and Montenegro, were displaced to temporary shelters on nearby highlands. They are likely to stay there until at least Sunday, the Orthodox Easter.

But TV reports said many were risking their lives to defend saturated homes from looters by taking refuge in their lofts, which were liable to collapse at any moment.

In the city of Arad, near the border with Hungary, apartment blocks and streets were flooded, with stranded residents forced to use dinghies for transport.

The Environment Ministry said the floods were partly caused by broken 300-year-old dams on the Timis river but that waters were now beginning to ebb. [...]

Prime Minister Calin Tariceanu, who visited the flood-affected areas, said the government would rebuild destroyed houses with materials from the state reserves. The houses are expected to be ready by the winter.

The government has allocated 500 billion lei ($18 million) to repair the collapsed railway infrastructure and 280 billion for the dams. Some 30 billion will also go toward vaccines to prevent epidemics spreading, emergency food and basic supplies. [...]

The government had yet to present an overall assessment of the damage, but the farm ministry said 110,000 hectares (271,800 acres) of wheat, barley, sunflower and vegetables fields had so far been damaged at an estimated financial loss of 300 billion lei.

Giant waves have been lashing some parts of Andhra Pradesh coast leading to panic, but experts have assured people that there is no threat of another tsunami.

Six to seven ft tall waves struck Uppada beach, about 20 km from the port town of Kakinada in East Godavari district, on Thursday. People living in other coastal villages in Prakasam district also experienced the unusually high tidal waves.

No loss of life or property was reported. [...]

MADRID: Spain has suffered its driest winter and early spring since records began almost 60 years ago, data from meteorologists showed on Friday.

Rainfall from November to the end of March this year was 37 per cent below the average for the period and the lowest since records started in 1947, the National Meteorological Office said.

With water reserves in Spain at just 60 per cent of full capacity, farmers fearing water rationing say they are planting fewer crops.

Neighbouring Portugal is suffering its worst drought for 25 years and authorities there have imposed irrigation restrictions in the south, a popular tourist destination.