An extreme drought in the southeastern United States has fueled a bitter tri-state battle over dwindling water resources that pits man against mussels.

Millions of people in the state of Georgia fear their taps could run dry, while environmentalists in Florida say freshwater mollusks protected under the US Endangered Species Act risk dying off.

Australia is locked in a drought of drastic proportions. In recent years, rivers have reached record lows. Temperatures have spiked to record highs. Cities are running out of water. Wildfires are burning. Ecosystems are suffering. And climate models are projecting more of the same—and worse—for many years to come.

We compiled a comprehensive database of large wildfires in western United States forests since 1970 and compared it with hydroclimatic and land-surface data. Here, we show that large wildfire activity increased suddenly and markedly in the mid-1980s, with higher large-wildfire frequency, longer wildfire durations, and longer wildfire seasons. The greatest increases occurred in mid-elevation, Northern Rockies forests, where land-use histories have relatively little effect on fire risks and are strongly associated with increased spring and summer temperatures and an earlier spring snowmelt.

Images from NASA satellites illustrate how quickly wildfires have spread throughout Southern California. Powerful Santa Ana winds have fueled more than 10 large wildfires stretching from Santa Barbara to San Diego.

The catastrophic fires that are sweeping Southern California are consistent with what climate change models have been predicting for years, experts say, and they may be just a prelude to many more such events in the future -- as vegetation grows heavier than usual and then ignites during prolonged drought periods.

Half a million Californians have been ordered to evacuate their homes and flee the spreading wildfires blazing across southern California Tuesday, US media reported.

The Los Angeles Times reported that the wind-driven infernos have destroyed some 700 houses and businesses and led authorities to urge some 500,000 people to leave their homes, mostly in the San Diego area in south-eastern California.

The San Diego NBC station is streaming video of the fires down there.

At a news conference shortly after 6 a.m., officials said fires had spread dramatically overnight, whipped by fierce Santa Ana winds. They said fire had jumped Interstate 15 at Lake Hodges and was burning in parts of Rancho Bernardo. Because of the explosive and unpredictable nature of the blazes, all residents living between Interstate 15 and Interstate 5 from Del Dios Highway in the north to Highway 56 in the south were told to begin evacuating.

"This fire is moving very quickly," San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders said. "Watch TV, listen to the radio and have your car prepared to leave."

Scott Pelley did a report last night on 60 Min. that had a very interesting quote at the end. It was made by the man who is :

Tom Boatner, who after 30 years on the fire line, is now the chief of fire operations for the federal government.

Mr. Boater is America's #1 wild land fire fighter, consider this exchange between Scott Pelley, and our #1 fire fighter :

"You know, there are a lot of people who don't believe in climate change," Pelley remarks.

"You won't find them on the fire line in the American West anymore," Tom Boatner says. "'Cause we've had climate change beat into us over the last ten or fifteen years. We know what we're seeing, and we're dealing with a period of climate, in terms of temperature and humidity and drought that's different than anything people have seen in our lifetimes."

Mr. Boater is talking about something that I try to pay attention to , that being what people in the field are saying about how nature is changing as the temperatures go up. Pelley also interviewed Tom Swetnam of the University of Arizona who is one of the world's leading fire ecologists. He is the keeper of the University of Arizona's 9,000 year-old dendrology collection. Mr. Swetnam is talking about the western U.S. losing half of it's forests as these megafires burn at higher, and higher altitudes.

Here is the 60 Min. story :
Warming Climate Fuels Mega-Fires, Scott Pelley Reports From The American West's Fire Lines On The Rising Number Of Mega-Fires

On August 5th I posted a some of the quotes from people who are on the fire lines this year. From this and other countries, we see over and over again this phrase from fire fighters :
"We've never seen this before."

That article is here.

60 Minutes joined up with Tom Boatner, who after 30 years on the fire line, is now the chief of fire operations for the federal government.

"A fire of this size and this intensity in this country would have been extremely rare 15, 20 years they're commonplace these days," Boatner says.

"Ten years ago, if you had a 100,000 acre fire, you were talking about a huge fire. And if we had one or two of those a year, that was probably unusual. Now we talk about 200,000 acre fires like it's just another day at the office. It's been a huge change," he says.

Farmers are making up to 1000 calls daily to the hotline seeking information on assistance such as income support, interest subsidies, planning grants and counselling.

With many areas of Australia's agricultural land in the grip of its worst drought on record, National Farmers Federation chief executive Ben Fargher said interest in farm exit grants and other schemes was not surprising.

Atlanta has long relied on 38,000-acre Lake Lanier north of the city to supply its tap water. But as Georgia became one of the nation's fastest-growing states, its capital grew to more than 4.5 million people, and the '50s-era reservoir simply could not keep up.

"Atlanta is one of the largest metropolitan areas on one of the smallest watersheds in the country," says Jill Johnson of Georgia Conservation Voters. "As we've continued to grow, our demand has increased. So there are more people using more water than ever before. But the amount of water available to us in the watershed didn't change."

If Georgia orders watering restrictions in metro Atlanta beyond the current outdoor ban, it will be taking drought-fighting steps that not even arid Southern California or Las Vegas has had to make.

After little or no rain in September, almost 80 percent of New South Wales state is now in a state of drought, compared with 71 percent last month.

Atlanta is expected to tighten its grip on municipal water, enacting restrictions on businesses that some say will be more severe than at anytime in any U.S. city in 30 years, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Already, Georgia has been battling neighboring states and the federal government over the flow of water from Lake Lanier, Atlanta's main water source. Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue has threatened to sue the Army Corps of Engineers if it doesn't hold back more water in the reservoir, as an historic drought tightens its grip across the region.

Officials coping with a severe drought in eastern Alabama and western Georgia issued sweeping bans Friday on outdoor watering and scrambled to secure a dwindling supply of drinking water to more than 50,000 people.

Divers went into Lake Martin looking for ways to increase the depth around intake pipes that drain water from the massive lake into the water system for Alexander City, 44 miles northeast of Montgomery on the Georgia line. Lake Martin is the only source of water for the Alexander City system.

Wind-blown fires scorching the parched Paraguayan countryside have scarred almost 3 million acres of forest, brush, pasture and farmland, officials said Friday, forcing the evacuation of 15,000 people and threatening nature reserves.

If you are to go in search of the big dry that has ransacked the dreams of country folk to the point that — according to Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile — a farmer is now committing suicide once every four days and the Federal Government is offering $150,000 to families wishing to walk off their properties, the land around Deniliquin is its physical essence.

The $150,000 "enhanced exit assistance" has become the most notable — and debated — feature of the Government's announcement this week of an extra $714 million in funds for the dry bush. This brings Australia's drought rescue effort to an astounding $3.5 billion since 2001. Farmers' groups have cautiously welcomed the exit initiative while pointing out, as the National Farmers Federation chief executive Ben Fargher put it, "we don't see a vacant landscape as the answer".

It is hardly a new device, and many agricultural industry advisers believe that most of the truly uneconomic, inefficient farmers have already gone, and most of the useless farming land has been abandoned.

The head of the national climate centre at the Bureau of Meteorology, Dr Michael Coughlan, points out that for a huge swathe of Australian farmland the long-term outlook is only likely to worsen with climate change. "What we will be seeing is higher frequency of low rainfall and that, to me, suggests a greater area of aridity, not a droughty area," Coughlan said. "We will see more rainfall in the north of Australia but a drying of the southern half."

In other words, much of the farmland that is now considered to be drought-affected may need to be reclassified as arid. What appears today to be a cyclical problem of drought will increasingly become a structural one.

Disastrous fires that swept through southern Greece in August destroyed more than 97,000 hectares of forest, with about a third of it protected natural habitats, an environmental group said Thursday.

The fires in the Peloponnese peninsula south of Athens burned over 170,000 hectares (420,000 acres) overall, including agricultural land mostly covered in olive groves, a study compiled by WWF's Greek branch and scientists at Aristotelio University in northern Greece said.

The warmer-than-normal temperatures continued this month. On Monday, the first full day of autumn, temperatures in the Shoals were almost 10 degrees above normal.

Nationwide, the average temperature for June, July and August, the period meteorologists consider summer, was 73.8 degrees. Only the summers of 1936, 2006, 1934, 2002 and 1998 were hotter, respectively, since record keeping began in 1885, according to the National Climatic Date Center in Ashville, N.C.

August was especially brutal, with all time temperature records for the month in West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Florida.

Statewide, it was the driest on record from January through August, according to federal weather data. The U.S. Drought Monitor rates central and north Alabama as being in an exceptional drought, the worst ranking given by the federal agency. The area of exceptional drought, which has expanded into some neighboring states, is the only one in the country with that ranking.
Looking back on his 14 years as cotton specialist at Auburn University, Dr. Dale Monks said Friday that "this is the most difficult year we've had." Because of the drought, he said, the fiber quality also is low and that will reduce prices for the crop.

A government statement said 23,000 of Australia's 140,000 farmers were already receiving assistance for the drought, which gripped 70 percent of Australia's farmland. The government expected about 100,000 farmers could apply for help under the latest package.

Australia is the driest continent after Antarctica and all major cities face drinking water restrictions due to the extended drought and changing patterns of rain fall.

Australia is suffering its worst drought in 60 years, decimating its agricultural industry. The nation's agricultural bureau has slashed its forecast for this year's winter harvest by over 30 percent. Farmers and consumers worldwide will face financial headaches.

According to the Australian, the nation is experiencing the worst succession of droughts since the 1940s, leaving farmers very worried about the future.

The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics announced on Tuesday that the cereal crop harvest beginning in October was estimated to be 25.6 million metric tons, down from the June forecast of 37 million. It also forecasted that the wheat crop would be 15.5 million metric tons instead of the 22.5 million predicted earlier. Both these figures depend on Australia receiving normal rain over the next few weeks.

Australia's drought is ``getting worse'' and ``deepening,'' according to federal Transport Minister Mark Vaile, leader of the rural-based Nationals Party.

Farmers across the nation are ``suffering badly,'' Vaile told reporters in Canberra today.

IT'S called agflation and it's coming very soon, propelled by climate change and drought.

Grain prices have hit record levels, and those prices will ramify through the feed chain - beef, dairy, pork, eggs and chicken -- and reach consumers.

The nation's food bowl, the Murray-Darling basin, does not have enough water in the system to keep 150,000ha of citrus, apples, pears, apricots, plums, cherries, table grapes and winegrapes alive, let alone in production.

Fruit production in the basin is worth more than $1.5 billion and accounts for 60 per cent of Australian-grown fruit.

Australian Horticulture Council chief executive Kris Newton says the severe cutback in irrigation water could result in price rises, as seen with bananas after Cyclone Larry.

"But that will be across all the commodities," Ms Newton said.

"We are facing a disaster unprecedented in Australian history. I can't think of anything in agriculture that comes even close."

Hot winds this week caused severe damage to the Western Australian wheat crop, further reducing the country's already struggling crop, Kim Chance, Western Australia's agriculture minister, told Reuters. Australia's wheat crop could be two million tonnes lower than even the most pessimistic forecasts, Chance said.

Australia may never fully recover from the current decade-long drought due to climate change, experts have warned.

The nation was facing a "new reality" of harsh water restrictions and a new climate with run-offs and river inflows the first casualty, speakers at Thursday's Bureau of Meteorology national post-winter update said.

It was also revealed that although above-average rain fell along Australia's east coast in June-July, August rainfall in the south-east had been "terrible".

A fire that raged in Greece for nearly a fortnight before being extinguished this week claimed a 66th life on Wednesday after a burns victim died in hospital, the fire department said.

"An airman injured on August 25 whilst helping firemen fight a blaze in Kalyvia near Athens died in a military hospital this morning," a fire brigade press officer said.

"He had burns on 70 percent of his body," the officer said.

A few weeks ago someone on a thread mentioned they hadn't thought of the records than are being set at night.
The NWS calls these temperature readings that come at night, or dawn .... "High Minimum". They are part of the intense areas of heat we see now, they just don't get any attention. Here's two good examples of what the nights are doing in these intense heat waves.

First is the screen shot on the right I did in the middle of August, of the Record Event Report out of the Salt Lake City station. The top set of cities are the day time records . The bottom the set are the "night time records". These two sets are interesting for several reasons. One they cover a lot of Utah, and are from several different altitudes.

Having looked at dozens and dozens of these records this year there's one thing that's common to them all.
The heat wave that just smashed records in the Southeastern US for example, was competing against the year 1954. It appeared again and again in city after city, as the year to beat. This Salt Lake report has the years 2000 and 2003 as hot years.

But look at the "night time" records, six records in six completely different years. That's because it's really hard to set a "High Minimum". Remember there's no sun to drive the temperature at night. Most of these records are moving up as ties, or one to two degrees at a time. But at Cedar City (4 degrees) in the desert, and Coalville (3 degrees) in the Wasatch Mountains the records were smashed, not just broken.

Las Vegas continues to crank out new records with her hot sister to the south, Phoenix.

Phoenix, has now had 32 days above 110 degrees this year, and the night life in Las Vegas keeps getting hotter.

RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE LAS VEGAS NV
1210 AM PDT TUE SEP 04 2007

...LAS VEGAS RECORDS ITS 64TH DAY IN 2007 WITH LOW TEMPERATURES 80
DEGREES OR HIGHER...

THE LOW TEMPERATURE ON SEPTEMBER 3RD WAS 85 DEGREES. THIS WAS THE
64TH TIME IN 2007 THAT LOW TEMPERATURES HAVE BEEN 80 DEGREES OR
HIGHER. THIS BREAKS THE PREVIOUS RECORD OF 63 DAYS SET IN 2006.

13 DAYS IN JUNE - TIED FOR THE MOST

27 DAYS IN JULY - TIED FOR THE SECOND MOST

21 DAYS IN AUGUST - TIED FOR THE MOST

3 DAYS SO FAR IN SEPTEMBER - RECORD IS 4.

As night time temperatures increase, it becomes harder for everything to recover from a hot day. I mean everything, from young birds, corn plants, and oak seedlings to people, electrical grids, and asphalt roads.
As the Director of the Los Angeles Water and Power said this weekend, "It's like running a car at a 100 miles an hour for 24 hours".

He was talking about the power grid in Southern California.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A heat wave swept southern California for a sixth day on Sunday, claiming the lives of an elderly couple, setting record temperatures and leaving thousands of customers without power.

The mercury eclipsed the century mark throughout the area, sending millions of people to the beaches for relief on the Labor Day holiday. Weather forecasters expect more harsh conditions on Tuesday, but a slight cooling though the week.

In downtown Los Angeles, the temperature reached 99 degrees Fahrenheit (37 C), and set records along the coast in Long Beach (103 degrees/39 C) and 56 miles inland in Riverside (112 degrees/44 C).

Drought could wipe out Australia's wheat crop despite expectations that the country's worst dry spell for a century was easing, Trade Minister Warren Truss warned Tuesday.

"In many parts of Australia there has been some relief and a quite large wheat crop was planted," he told reporters on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific summit in Sydney.

It seems that the people who actually are observing nature are getting concerned, because "Climatic Tsunami" isn't my phrase.
That phrase came from Professor Stephen J Pyne, at Arizona State University. Now that's some strong language for the professor . One from Arizona State no less, one of the leading places in the world for the study of trees and forests. They pioneered dendrology, and have one of the best tree ring collections in the world. Professor Pyne was featured in a story that CP33 found.

From that find :

Dubbed "megafires", they rage over thousands of miles at 1,000C and create their own weather, even triggering tornadoes.

If you think the fires we just saw in Greece were a freak, think again. Consider 2003, just 4 years ago.
In the Siberia :

In the spring and summer of 2003, Siberian forest fires consumed 46.7 million acres, or nearly 73,000 square miles -- an area slightly larger than the state of Washington. That was more than twice the annual average from 1996 until 2003. The fires burned most intensely during May and June, and the smoke plume was tracked by satellites and detected during a research flight off the Washington coast on June 2

Or the fires in 1998 in Indonesia :

The 1998 El Niño, for example, helped encourage fires across Borneo which emitted up to 2.5 billion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, equivalent to Europe's entire carbon emissions that year.

Or this from the United States just last year :

AMARILLO, Texas, March 15, 2006 (ENS) - Firefighters are battling the largest complex of fires in Texas history. Eleven people have lost their lives and 10,000 head of cattle have been killed in the grass fires that have spread since Sunday across 850,000 acres, or about 1,328 square miles of the Texas Panhandle.

Walls of flames , fueled at times by 55 mile an hour winds , literally burned livestock where they stood in some places, ranchers report. The flames came so quickly the cattle were not able to run from them.

In 9 days Greece lost over 700 square miles on top of the already scorched earth from the rest of the summer's fires. 65 dead and 4,000 homeless. Many of whom are old, and will have a hard time with a small plot of ashes to rebuild on.

Kevin O'Loughlin, the head of Melbourne's Bushfire Co-operative Research Centre added: "They cannot be controlled by any suppression resources that we have available anywhere in the world."

But there is an even more dangerous aspect to the unfolding drama in the Arctic. While governments and oil giants are hoping the melting ice will allow them access to the world's last treasure trove of oil and gas, climatologists are deeply worried about something else buried under the ice that, if unearthed, could wreak havoc on the biosphere, with dire consequences for human life.

Much of the Siberian sub-Arctic region, an area the size of France and Germany combined, is a vast frozen peat bog. Before the most recent Ice Age, the area was mostly grassland, teeming with wildlife. The coming of the glaciers entombed the organic matter below the permafrost, where it has remained ever since. Although the surface of Siberia is largely barren, there is as much organic matter buried underneath the permafrost as there is in all of the world's tropical rain forests.

Now the permafrost is thawing on land and along the seabeds. If it occurs in the presence of oxygen on land, the decomposing of organic matter leads to the production of carbon dioxide. If the permafrost thaws along lake shelves, in the absence of oxygen, the decomposing matter releases methane. Methane is the most potent of the greenhouse gases, with a greenhouse effect 23 times that of carbon dioxide.

Fires of unprecedented ferocity are sweeping around the world, fuelled by global warming and misguided environmentalism.

Dubbed "megafires", they rage over thousands of miles at 1,000C and create their own weather, even triggering tornadoes.

Louisville, Durham, Greensboro. There's more on this list, I've just started looking. The records don't get as extreme as what Montana did in July, but they are mind blowing in there size of land covered by this heat and drought. Consider Nashville :

THE AVERAGE TEMPERATURE DURING THE MONTH OF AUGUST 2007 AVERAGED
86.9 DEGREES...WHICH WAS 9.0 DEGREES ABOVE NORMAL. IT WAS 3.6
DEGREES HOTTER THAN THE HOTTEST AUGUST ON RECORD...WHICH WAS IN
1995...AND THE HOTTEST OF ANY MONTH IN 137 YEARS OF RECORD KEEPING.
PREVIOUSLY...JUNE OF 1952 WAS THE HOTTEST MONTH ON RECORD...WHEN THE
AVERAGE MONTHLY TEMPERATURE WAS 84.7 DEGREES.

THERE WERE 15 DAYS OF 100 DEGREES AND ABOVE IN NASHVILLE DURING
AUGUST 2007. THIS IS THE MOST EVER IN THE MONTH OF AUGUST. THE
PREVIOUS RECORD FOR AUGUST WAS 7 DAYS BACK IN 1954.

THE 15 DAYS OF 100 DEGREES AND ABOVE IN NASHVILLE IS ALSO THE MOST
EVER RECORDED IN A SINGLE MONTH. THE PREVIOUS RECORD WAS 11 DAYS
BACK IN 1952.

-NWS

The average high at Tuscaloosa, Alabama was 99.5 in August. Heat for this long, this high, is lethal to more than just old poor people & kids ...... it begins to kill trees. Dead trees burn. Thankfully, the lid of high pressure finally broke down, and the temps backed off, and some rain is falling. But drought, is like losing at cards it's hard to get out of holes, and 15 days of triple digit heat ain't going the right direction.

Cities that saw the hottest month ever recorded this summer :

Las Vegas

Boise

Salt Lake City

Missoula (All of Montana)

Nashville

Atlanta

Raleigh

Roanoke

Louisville

Durham

Greensboro

Japan, Bulgaria, and Romania ..... All set records for the highest temperature ever recorded in those countries, this summer.

Move over 1934 .... here comes 2007.
Check back I'll add to this list in the tread.

August 2007 shattered heat records across North Carolina, said Ryan P. Boyles, the state climatologist.

"It is going to go down as one of the warmest, if not the warmest, across most of the state," Boyles said. "And it is going to go down as one of the driest, if not the driest."

It was the the hottest month ever for Raleigh and Durham and Greensboro, Boyles said. That is according to the average mean temperature for the month, a measurement that weather folks typically use to make comparisons, Boyles added.

This year, as of Friday morning, August's average mean temperature in Fayetteville was 85.3 degrees. That shattered the previous record of 83.2 that had held since 1900.

Barring any extreme and highly unlikely cool-down today, this August will end up by far the warmest on record for Memphis.

Through midnight Tuesday, the average daily high temperature for the month was a scorching 99.1 degrees

-- considerably higher than the previous record of 97.6 set in 1980.

The average temperature of 88.6 degrees was tracking well above the previous mark of 87.2 recorded in 1980.

The list of records set during the month doesn't end with temperatures.

Unless you spent the last month in a cave without television, internet, fax, phone or paper, you know it's been extremely hot. But did you know that in the 130+ years of record keeping, no month was hotter than the one we just experienced here in Louisville?

The heat was a constant. The first 20 days of August featured temperatures at or above 90 degrees, and most days were well above 90. Ten times the mercury topped out at 99 degrees or higher. Five times we topped out above 100! The records kept falling like a steady drum beat. No less than 11 record temperatures were tied or set, including a 105-degree reading set on the 16, which was good for the hottest temperature ever recorded during the month of August!

The average high temperature for the month turned out to be 96 degrees, while the average low was 74. Add these two numbers together and divide by two to get the mean temperature for the month. That mean temperature turns out to be 85.0 degrees. Exactly two degrees higher than the previous highest ever recorded for the month of August! It wasn't just the hottest August, however, it was also the hottest month ever recorded in Louisville. To put this into perspective, the previous record was a mean temperature of 84.2 degrees set 106 years ago during July 1901 -- wow!

When a long jump or pole vault record is broken in the Olympics, it usually happens by a fraction of an inch. When a record falls in a running event, it is often by a tenth of a second.

Imagine if a long jumper or pole vaulter sailed a foot past the old mark, or a sprinter raced through the tape two seconds faster than anyone before.

August 2007 is that kind of massive record-breaker in Roanoke's weather history. You have just lived through the hottest month in nearly 60 years of official weather records -- and second place isn't close.

Firefighters in southern Greece were battling Saturday to contain the remains of an inferno that has killed more than 60 people, with temperatures forecast to rise again after a recent brief respite.

Five large fires were still burning in the Peloponnese peninsula to the south of Athens and the island of Evia east of the capital, but inhabited areas were not in threat, a fire department spokesman said.

"The fires are burning over an enormous area which firemen cannot easily access on foot, it would require a force of tens of thousands of people," fire department spokesman Nikolaos Diamantis told reporters on Friday evening.

Temperatures were forecast to reach 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in these areas and in Athens on Saturday while stormy weather was expected in the north.

"This is our tsunami. Our 9/11," said a Greek friend, grasping for words to express the dimensions of the devastation. The fires that have reduced vast swaths of Greece to a stinking, charred vision of hell have shocked the world, but will soon be forgotten by the disaster-weary media, which will move on to the next subject. For those of us who live in Greece, the catastrophe is the worst thing to have hit the country since the ravages of the second world war. Like the war, the fallout will almost certainly affect our lives for at least the next generation.

Article continues

Commissioner for Agriculture and Industries Ron Sparks addressed the Rotary Club Thursday discussing the drought, state policy making food imports safer and the state's role in the growing field of alternative fuels.

This year Alabama is going through its worst drought on record.

"We've got some farmers that have lost not only one crop but two crops."

According to Sparks, March had abnormally high temperatures putting peach and wheat crops on a fast track. Farmers thought they were going to be able to make up this year what they lost last year, he said. But the freeze in April devastated fruit and wheat crops.

Following that, farmers planted crops but drought set in. In late July, badly needed rain fell so farmers planted cotton hoping to make one of the best yields on record.

According to Sparks, those crops dried up due to "the longest period of triple digit temperatures that we've had in the history of this state."

Sparks said a disaster bill needs to be passed in Washington, D.C.

"If we don't get a disaster package to help our farmers in Alabama this year, there should never be a disaster package to help any farmer in the United States from now on," he said. "The whole state of Alabama is burnt up."

Low river levels brought on by the drought have forced one paper company in Monroe County to use pumps on a barge to supply water to the mill and another in Prattville to store wastewater in ponds instead of discharging it into the Alabama River.

Officials at Alabama River Pulp Co. near Perdue Hill said the pumping operation was needed because the river had fallen below 7 feet.

"We are currently operating at levels at which we have never operated before," said Pete Black, Alabama River Pulp's general manager.

Lower temperatures and lighter winds helped bring fires around the Mediterranean under control on Friday but six Croatian firefighters were found dead and in Greece authorities feared a new heatwave.

The Croatian firefighters, who included a 17 year-old and two 19 year-olds, died on Thursday after being cut off while battling a wildfire in a national park on the Adriatic island of Kornat, the fire brigade said.

Six Croatian firefighters were found dead Friday and five were in a critical condition in hospital after getting cut off battling a wildfire on the Adriatic island of Kornat, authorities said Friday.

"We located six corpses which we will remove in the morning. We evacuated 11 wounded firemen on Thursday evening," the commander of the GSS national rescue service, Vinko Prizmic, told AFP.

The victims, most of them aged between 17 and 33, became surrounded by flames when powerful winds changed the direction of the blaze that broke out on Kornat around midday on Thursday, said Croatian fire chief Mladen Jurin.

"They simply had nowhere to escape and died of burns," the head of the rescue team sent to the spot, Stipe Bozic, told national television.

The 11 survivors were rushed to a hospital in the central coastal city of Zadar and five of them were taken to the capital Zagreb where doctors were fighting to save their lives.

The five were in a critical condition.

Global warming will make severe thunderstorms and tornadoes a more common feature of U.S. weather, NASA scientists said today.

Climate models have previously shown that Earth will see more heavy rainstorms as the atmosphere warms, but a new climate model developed by NASA researchers is the first to show the difference in strength between storms that occur over land and those over the ocean and how storms strengths will change in general.

The models don't directly simulate thunderstorms and lightning, but look for conditions that are ripe for severe storms to form.

More of Europe's forest land has already burned this year than in all of last year, the Italian farmers' association Coldiretti said yesterday.

As of the end of July, 337,600 hectares had gone up in smoke, according to the European Forest Fire Information System, which recorded a loss of 358,500 hectares for all of 2006.

"If you consider that easily more than 20,000 hectares have burned so far this month, notably in Greece and Italy, this year is worse than ever," spokesman Paolo Falcioni said.

Greece has been battling multiple forest fires since June, fanned by three heat waves - the latest last week - and months of drought. Tens of thousands of hectares have gone up in smoke, making this summer's fires the worst in 10 years.

While Greece edged closer to mastering forest fires that have killed more than 63 people, other countries on the Mediterranean and the Adriatic struggled with deadly woodland blazes Thursday.

In Algeria, forest fires fed by winds off the Sahara and still burning out of control in the north of the country had claimed eight lives in the past 48 hours, said the country's civil protection services.

In Spain, 400 firefighters were forced to give ground as a fierce blaze that started two days ago in the northeast continued to grow in strength, fed by the hot weather and summer winds.

In Croatia a firefighter died in a fire that destroyed some 500 hectares (1,235 acres) of forest on an island off the Adriatic coast.

Some 400 firefighters were forced to give ground Thursday as a fierce fire in eastern Spain increased in strength, fed by the hot weather and summer winds, local officials told the Spanish media.

The fire, which broke out on Tuesday and by late Wednesday had already burnt up 1,500 hectares (3,700 acres) of land, had gained in strength overnight, Vincente Rambla, vice president of the Valencia region, told reporters.

Forest fires fed by winds off the Sahara and still burning out of control in northern Algeria have claimed eight lives in the past 48 hours, the country's civil protection services said Thursday.

A lack of specialised water-bombing planes, such as those currently being used to fight fires in Greece and Spain, adds to the challenges faced by firefighters and soldiers sent in as reinforcements.

Authorities have been battling 90 separate fires in 19 wooded regions in the north of the country, from Chlef in the west across to Skikda in the east.

Ian Shippen is something of a rural prophet on the arid salt plains 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) west of Sydney.

A thoughtful 42-year-old with spiked hair, Shippen believes the drought shriveling Australia's food bowl will forever change agriculture on the world's driest settled continent.

"We are going back to our natural way of farming, we are going back to the way it was 100 years ago, growing good broadacre areas and running sheep," the former rice farmer told Reuters at his property near the rural hamlet of Moulamein.

"We will have big areas of country that are pretty bloody useless, running one sheep to 5 or 6 acres. This drought is going to knock it all around."

SOUTH Australian authorities have declared what is thought to be the state's first winter fire bans as the combination of potentially record high August temperatures and gusty winds forced emergency fire services onto full alert.

Fire bans starting from midnight last night were declared in four areas, including the Adelaide Hills, which were ravaged in the 1983 bushfires, and areas of Eyre Peninsula, where in 2005 eight people lost their lives.

Country Fire Service state co-ordinator Malim Watts said the bans were declared in areas that were wooded and close to places where people would be unprepared for bushfires in winter. "We are being proactive rather than reactive," he said.

The European Space Agency said satellite data suggested Greece has suffered more wildfires this month than European nations have during the last decade.

The ESA said its ERS-2 and Envisat satellites continuously survey fires burning across the Earth's surface with onboard sensors -- the Along Track Scanning Radiometer, or ATSR, and the Advanced Along Track Scanning Radiometer.

The sensors measure thermal infrared radiation across Earth's land surfaces. Temperatures exceeding about 95 degrees Fahrenheit at night are classed as burning fires. Data gathered through Monday show Greece has had four times the number of fires this August as compared with its July and August 1998 records.

Fire crews saw conditions unexpectedly worsen on Tuesday, with gusty winds pushing a wildfire closer to Sun Valley Resort's ski area and forcing hundreds more homes to be evacuated in the valley below.

The fire has burned more than 64 square miles of spruce, fir and pine trees, keeping crews busy near a summit lodge adorned with fading pictures of Ernest Hemingway, Gary Cooper and Tyrone Power, past visitors to the ski area founded in 1936.

Amid the smoke, managers opted to run ski lifts — not for people, but to keep errant flames from cooking cables that ferry more than 200,000 visitors up the slopes each winter.

In six hot, windy days of uncontrolled blazes, Greece lost more of its rapidly dwindling forestland than in any single year on record.

The massive fires, several still raging Wednesday, have killed at least 64 people and gutted hundreds of homes in scores of southern villages.

The inferno also destroyed fragile mountain ecosystems — that will require decades to revive — and an entire rural way of life, threatening to turn thousands of villagers into environmental refugees.

The forecasted high here today is 111 degrees. If the mercury hits that mark, the city will set a record for the most days in a year above 110 degrees, at 29.

The record was tied yesterday when the high hit 111.

The new mark is the pinnacle of a stark trend. The average number of 110+ days in Phoenix has climbed from 6.7 per year in the 1950s to 21.6 per year so far this decade.

I am writing about natural heat and extremely high temperatures, which have never before been recorded in this country. This is not a local problem. This is a global challenge. Ukraine's weather influences grain crops and consequently food prices worldwide. Not only does it have an impact on grain traders but it also affects those who eat twice or thrice a day.

Greek firefighters gained the upper hand on Wednesday over widespread forest fires that have killed at least 63 people and left the government shaken by accusations of incompetence.

Thousands of Greeks were expected to attend a protest in Athens later on Wednesday to express their anger and dismay at the fires that have left thousands homeless after they devastated swathes of countryside for the last six days.

Blazes that had trapped villagers in parts of the Peloponnese peninsula were under control, but firefighters said winds could rekindle the flames, a daily occurrence which has dogged efforts to combat the worst wildfires Greece has ever known.

"We have put the fires out, but we have to remain careful because the winds usually pick up in the afternoon," volunteer firefighter Costas Georgakopoulos, who had tackled the blaze in the Peloponnese town of Ploutochori, told Reuters.

The government told Reuters it estimated fire damage at least 0.6 percent of GDP, or 1.2 billion euros ($1.63 billion), and that it would apply for European Union emergency aid.

Thousands of people rushed to banks to claim a 3,000 euro initial government compensation handout.

NASA's Earth-monitoring Aqua satellite captured this dramatic shot of the deadly fires in Greece that have claimed an estimated 60 lives.

Smoke clouds drift across southern Greece and into the Mediterranean. Fires burning actively are outlined with red boxes. In the top left, smoke from a large fire drifts over Athens. Hundreds of homes and about 30 villages have been abandoned as the fires continue to rage out of control, according to reports.

The Aqua satellite is part of NASA's Earth Observing System, which includes several Earth-sensing satellites. Ironically, Aqua monitors the Earth's water cycle, including evaporation from oceans and the water content of clouds, soil and sea ice.

The blaze has so far burned some 1,500 hectares (3,700 acres) of scrub and farmland, a councilman with the regional government of Valencia, Serafin Castellano, told reporters after touring the affected area.

Thirty-three people who were evacuated on Tuesday night as a precaution have since been allowed to return home, private radio Cadena Ser reported.

Local officials said they believe the fire, which broke out near the town of Les Useres, was set off by sparks set off by a crew that was working to repair an electrical line in the area.

Temperatures in Valencia are forecast to reach highs of up to 39 degrees Celsius (102 Fahrenheit) on Wednesday, the national weather office said.

The government of Valencia put the region on its highest level of alert for forest fires because of the heat.

Look at the dramatic pictures, and it would be easy to conclude that the forest fires currently raging across regions of Greece would bring dramatic changes to landscapes and wildlife.

And what about all that carbon dioxide? A significant impact on climate change?

Despite the long history of burning bushes around the Med, there is much for scientists still to discover about the ecological effects of fire.

Flood and drought have killed more than 1,100 people in China this year and caused 10 billion dollars in economic losses, the government said Tuesday.

The death toll from flooding and drought has climbed to 1,138, with another 210 people missing, Vice Minister of Water Resources E Jingping told a press conference.

More than 139 million people have been affected by the severe rains, flooding and drought, he said, adding that most of the problems occurred during the peak rainy season of July and August.

As of August 21, 5.32 million hectares (13.1 million acres) of crops had been damaged while 883,000 houses had collapsed, causing a direct economic loss of 10 billion dollars, according to ministry statistics.

Water Resources Minister Chen Lei said many Chinese cities had suffered from "unprecedented" rain this year.

This is a U-Tube clip shot yesterday near Olympia, Greece

When viewing this clip, you will be seeing one of the predictions made 25 years ago about Climate Change.
It's a term that fire fighters use, it's called "Extreme Fire Behavior". It makes no difference what the ignition sources are, when conditions reach those in Greece this year, and at many other locations. Things are going to burn, and burn violently. A fire in Utah this year wasn't caused by man, and it was burning 100,000 acres a day at one point.

Here's some quotes from fire fighters here in America this season :

The Words of Fire Fighters

The Jocko Lakes Fire west of Seeley Lake blew up Saturday afternoon, displaying "tremendous fire activity," fire information officer Pat Cross said, "activity firefighters haven't seen before in this part of the world."

Athens reached 104 the day before this latest wave of fires. This was the third heat wave to hit Greece this summer ...... The day before the latest round of fires to sweep Greece arrived :

The temperature reached 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in Athens yesterday, making it one of the hottest days of the summer. Meteorologists said yesterday that it was the first time that three heat waves had been recorded in a single summer.

The forecast for Athens is for 95 degrees all week.

Meanwhile back home :
BOISE, Idaho -- Firefighters sprayed water with snowmaking machines to save a $12 million log ski lodge from a wildfire that has forced the evacuation of more than 1,000 homes, officials said Monday.

Firefighters using snowmaking machines doused a series of spot fires, some within 50 yards of a $12 million log ski lodge atop a mountain at Sun Valley.

Wind gusting to 45 mph fanned flames as smaller fires blackened ski runs on the backside of Bald Mountain and nearly reached the lodge above the posh resort town of Ketchum, fire and resort officials said.

Firefighters working with resort crews sprayed water from a dozen snowmaking guns after sunset Sunday night to put out the spot fires and soak the bone-dry ground around the 17,000-square foot lodge, averting millions of dollars in potential losses, said Jack Sibbach, the resort's sales and marketing director.

The temperature reached 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in Athens yesterday, making it one of the hottest days of the summer. Meteorologists said yesterday that it was the first time that three heat waves had been recorded in a single summer.

"High temperatures, intense sunlight and the lack of wind are ideal conditions for the development of ozone," said Ziomas.

Experts warned that another bout of hot weather in September, when most Athenians have returned from their vacations, could have serious consequences.

By last night, the death toll had climbed to 63, with more feared dead in many towns and villages that have been consumed by the racing fires driven for the past five days by extreme temperatures and gale-force winds.

With elections looming in a little over a fortnight, the scale of the disaster has left the conservative ruling party facing the prospect of defeat. The opposition socialists have joined angry victims of the fires and ecologists to castigate the authorities for doing too little, too late. Thousands took to the streets of Athens yesterday to voice their anger at what they claim is catastrophic incompetence on the part of the government.

Firefighting services are stretched to the limit, with new fires erupting almost hourly, fanned by strong, dry winds known as Meltemi. Authorities are currently battling some 170 blazes from the Ionian Sea in the west, Ioannina in the north and the Peloponnese in the south. Water-bombing aircraft from France, Italy and Canada are in action, with more international aid expected.

The worst of the fires have been concentrated in the mountains of the Peloponnese in the south and on the island of Evia north of Athens. Strong winds blew smoke and ash over the capital, blackening the evening sky and turning the rising moon red.

The fires are so big that they can be observed from space. EUMETSAT satellite pictures show plumes of smoke stretching hundreds of miles across the Mediterranean.

Bulgaria declared a state of emergency in its southeast Sunday, as a big forest fire took hold, killing two people.

The civil defence service said the two fatalities were a handicapped man who was trapped in his home, and his wife who tried to save him.

More of Europe's forest land has already burned this year than in all of last year, the Italian farmers association Coldiretti said Sunday.

As of the end of July, 337,600 hectares (834,200 acres) had gone up in smoke, according to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), which recorded a loss of 358,500 hectares for all of 2006.

At least 1,400 villagers have been stranded in northern Romania amid heavy rains that caused rivers to overflow, killing a 19-year-old man.

The 17th-Century Sambata de Sus monastery was evacuated in the floods, which also cut power to 130 villages in the north and east of the country.

Six of Romania's 41 counties have been affected, with authorities warning that seven more counties were in danger.

The rain comes after three days of high temperatures of up to 40C.

Massive fires consuming large areas of southern Greece for a third day raced toward the site of the ancient Olympics on Sunday, engulfing villages and forests as the flames reached one of the most revered sites of antiquity.

At least 56 people have been killed in the country's worst wildfires in decades, including five who died Sunday in a new blaze on the island of Evia. There were fears the death toll could rise as new fires broke out and strong winds pushed flames through villages and hamlets.

"It's hell everywhere," said Costas Ladas, who said the fire covered more than a mile in three minutes. "I've never seen anything like it."

"We have been totally destroyed here. We've been wiped out," Yiannis Panagopoulos, mayor of Oleni in the western Peloponnese, told Greek television. He said that about 80 houses in several villages were burned and the olive groves from which many residents made their living had been decimated.

''The bottom line is you've turned these firefighters, these highly trained and experienced firefighters . . . into a very expensive maintenance crew,'' said Jim Smalley, manager of Firewise, a national program that educates homeowners on how to protect their property from wildfires.
Most homeowners in Idaho's fire-prone communities have not taken steps such as clearing trees and brush around their homes to protect their property, said David Olson, a spokesman with the Boise National Forest who has more than 30 years experience in wildland firefighting.

A mandatory evacuation was ordered Saturday for residents of more than 1,000 homes south of Ketchum, where a massive wildfire raged and high winds grounded firefighting air tankers.

After three days of relative calm, the 39-square-mile fire was 38 percent contained, but embers blew ahead of the blaze and increased the threat of spot fires, fire spokesman Bob Beanblossom said.

The weeks-long heat wave that has baked the Southeast, South and Tennessee Valley is causing already extreme drought conditions to worsen.

Temperatures that easily climbed into the middle and upper 90s and even the triple-digits this past week are continuing to wilt corn, cotton and fruit crops throughout the Carolinas, Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama and Kentucky. Farmers throughout these regions are expecting some of the worst crop yields in decades.

Drought in Pridnestrovie can lead to low yield and even to the loss of some agricultural crops, local news agency PMR News reported Tuesday.

In the past week, following an early heat-wave, drought conditions have worsened over the length of the entire country.

May set records for dry conditions in the country. Across the main crop-producing regions of Pridnestrovie, the most severe drought in this decade is damaging crops and cutting into farmers' pockets.

Greece has been battling multiple forest fires since June, fanned by three heatwaves, the latest this week, and months of drought. Tens of thousands of hectares (acres) have gone up in smoke.

There was no respite from the heat in sight -- the temperature was forecast to hit a high of 36 Celsius (96 F) on Sunday in the Peloponnese with winds of around 20 kilometres per hour (12 mph) fanning the flames.

Forest fires sweeping uncontrolled across southern Greece have killed 46 people, some found Saturday in the charred homes of mountain villages reached too late by rescuers hampered by wind-driven flames. New blazes erupted across the country, including a fire on the fringes of Athens.

Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis said arson was suspected in some of the 170 fires that have broken out since Friday morning. He declared a nationwide state of emergency and vowed to pursue the perpetrators.

High temperatures and strong winds contributed to the spread of more than 220 blazes across the country over the past two days, claiming at least 47 lives, fire service spokesman Nikolaos Diamantis said today in a televised news conference. Arson is suspected in some of them.

Flames trapped people who attempted to flee in their cars, save their homes and fields or rescue others. Several villages in central and southern Greece were evacuated and dozens of people were reported missing.

At least 36 people perished in a blaze that erupted yesterday afternoon in the southwestern region of Ilia. Fanned by winds, the fire consumed 18,000 acres of forest, olive groves and brush land in less than nine hours, according to fire service estimates.

"Not only have our farmers been suffering through the highest level of drought in the entire United States, but now we are experiencing record breaking temperatures that may cause even more losses," added Commissioner Sparks.

"I am glad they are sending money to Alabama and I hope this is just the beginning of the relief efforts for our farmers."

The 100-plus degree heat and the rainfall shortage this month has caused drought conditions so bad that they usually don't occur more than once a century.

The state climatologist said Thursday that drought in 70 of Georgia's 159 counties — almost half — has now been classified as "exceptional."

At least nine people are reported to have burnt to death in their cars as they attempted to flee the flames near the town of Zaharo, in the west of the Peloponnese.

The Associated Press news agency reported that a car had crashed into a fire engine, causing a traffic jam from which people could not escape as the flames advanced.

Greece map

Zaharo, 330km (206 miles) south of Athens, seemed to be the centre of the disaster. Fire crews said they had found at least 30 bodies in villages near the town, as they searched burned out cars and houses.

More bad news out of Greece, the fires are breaking out again with a vengeance 17 dead so far :

17 die in Greek wildfires; outside help sought
Massive blazes burn out of control; several villages evacuated

The heat in the northern Mediterranean is entering it's 3rd month.

But there is this mind blowing number out of Australia tonight :

Freak rainfall smashes records

In a 24 hour period, it rained 28 inches in Australia. This is not a Tropical Cyclone produced rain event.
I just seeded some reports on new rainfall records coming out of Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, and Ohio.

All over the world, the clouds continue to produce these mind blowing amounts of water, Ohio's not alone.
It rained 17 inches in North Korea a few weeks ago, and Pyongyang says 437,000 affected by North Korean floods

ATHENS, Greece - Forest fires raced across southern Greece on Friday, sweeping into mountainous towns and villages and killing at least 17 people, two found locked in an embrace and others outside cars overtaken by the flames.

The government appealed to European Union countries to "send any help they can," acting Interior Minister Spyros Flogaitis said after an emergency meeting of Greece's civil protection authority.

Hot, dry winds gusting to gale force prevented firefighting planes from taking off, leaving only ground forces to fight the flames in the southern Peloponnese, occasionally helped by helicopters and residents using their garden hoses. Many people were feared trapped in villages.

"We've had persistent, ongoing, relentless precipitation pretty much all year," Murphy told AFP.

"It's our wettest year on record so far... dating back to 1895."

Meanwhile, a crippling heat wave brought death and drought to the south eastern states of Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama.

Thirteen deaths were reported in Memphis, Tennessee and a dozen were reported in Alabama, officials said.

"These are a hundred year-plus records that are being shattered," Murphy said.

One such record was in Athens, Georgia which has had 13 days this month with temperatures at or above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to an average of one day a year in August.

"That's a tremendous climatologically extreme event," Murphy said.

Birmingham, Alabama broke records with 10 consecutive days of temperatures at or above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 Celsius), up from the previous record of eight days in the deadly heat wave of 1980.

Drought conditions are so severe that the town of Franklin has begun shutting off water service to homes which violate water restrictions and is considering banning restaurants from serving water to customers who don't specifically ask for it, the Tennessean newspaper reported.

Temperatures last week hit an all-time high of 40.9 degrees Celsius (106 degrees Fahrenheit) in parts of Japan. Demand is soaring this week as factories and offices resume operation following summer holidays.

The temperature in Tokyo went as high as 37.0 degrees (98.6 Fahrenheit) Wednesday and rose to 38.5 degrees (101.3 Fahrenheit) in Gunma, north of Tokyo.

At least 60 people, most of them elderly, have died this summer due to the heat wave, according to media tallies.

State health officials said Tuesday that 10 heat-related deaths have been recorded in Alabama this month and urged people to continue to use caution as temperatures remain high.

State health officer Don Williamson said there is a risk that people will think the danger has passed since temperatures have dipped slightly during the past few days.

"I think the fact that we have not been in triple digits for the last few days may make people think it's over, but we still have a heat index reaching 105, and it's still not getting below 75 at night," he said.

A fire at a power substation Wednesday forced the nation's largest public utility to ask major industrial customers to reduce their electricity use as a heat wave continued to dog the region it serves.

The fire caused a partial shutdown at a Tennessee Valley Authority plant in Kentucky as temperatures were predicted to rise near 100 degrees through Friday in the Knoxville-based utility's seven-state territory.

In Nashville, Tuesday marked the 12th day of 100 degrees or above this month, the most recorded in any month for the city. Nashville set a daily record of 102 on Wednesday, while Memphis matched a 2000 record of 100.

Japan faces electricity shortages as a sustained heat wave pushes demand to record levels, straining a supply grid compromised by the forced shutdown of the world's largest nuclear plant.

Macon County and Middle Tennessee may break a number of drought and heat records in the period June through August 2007, if current trends persist through the end of the month.

On track to be the driest year since 1954, the region recently broke the 1988 record for the number of consecutive days (20 and counting) for the temperature to rise above 95 degrees.

The past week saw the hottest day of the year, with 105 degrees recorded in Lafayette on Thursday, August 16.

Less than four inches of rain have been recorded thus far in our region during the months June-August. A little more than 4 inches fell during this same period in 1954.

My destination was a tiny area in the midst of the Amazon basin, a few hectares of land in the middle of a preserve called the Tapaj�s National Forest, 67 km south of Santar�m in the Brazilian state of Par�. After a tooth-loosening ride along a cratered, flooded jungle road and a short but slippery hike into the 25-year-old preserve, I finally got to my goal�a surreal scene in the heart of the rain forest. As far as the eye could see, transparent plastic tents covered the forest floor, which was crisscrossed by a complicated network of trenches and pits. I lowered myself to the bottom of one of the holes and discovered that despite the intermittent downpours that sweep the region, the earth was relatively dry. The plastic tarps and the trenches were designed to carry almost all rainfall out of this patch of forest. As a result�and according to plan�the Brazil nut, tropical cedar and other great trees of the affected zone were beginning to suffer from thirst, even as rainwater doused the leafy forest canopy.

Experts warned that the heat and extended drought conditions could mean an early start to the fire season, which usually doesn't begin until October.

Leaves of some species of trees have already begun to brown and drop to the ground as trees suffer continued stress from the recent extreme weather that has blanketed the South coupled with April's late freeze. That will create wildfire conditions during the closing weeks of summer.

"There's going to be a lot of flammable material out there," said Tim Phelps, Tennessee Department of Agriculture information and education program specialist.

A two-week heatwave in the southern and Midwestern US has resulted in the deaths of at least 43 people, many of whom were elderly, officials have said.

On Sunday, temperatures dropped to 94F (34C) in Memphis, Tennessee - the first time in 10 days they did not top 100F.

Alabama, Missouri, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, South Carolina and Mississippi have also been affected.

TVA put an exclamation point after the worst heat wave in North Alabama history with its announcement Thursday that it would temporarily hike rates.

Between October and December, Tennessee Valley Authority will bump electricity costs up by .432 cents per kilowatt hour, which it said will add between $3 and $6 to the typical bill for residential consumers.

The announcement comes as demand for electricity, largely to keep homes cool, is at an all-time high. Temperatures soared Thursday, topping 104 degrees and marking the ninth consecutive day of triple-digit heat.

That ties a record for most consecutive days above 100 degrees set in 1935, according to the National Weather Service in Huntsville. It also beat the record for the warmest Aug. 16, which was recorded at 101 in 1954.

Friday's high temperature is predicted at 99 degrees, but a NWS forecaster said it could reach 100.

The drought that has parched Alabama since 2005 is contributing to the record-breaking heat wave that sent more than 50 people to Alabama hospitals Wednesday and Thursday, state climatologist John Christy said Thursday.

Temperatures in many areas have soared over 100 degrees for more than 10 days in a row. While there have been no confirmed deaths from the unrelenting heat, an economist said there could be long-range economic damage to sectors other than agriculture and forestry.

The U.S. Drought Monitor has much of Alabama in its worst category, Alabama Power Co.'s reservoirs already are at record lows for this time of year. Gov. Bob Riley has declared a drought emergency in 59 of the state's 67 counties.

Nine more people were killed Friday as record-level summer temperatures scorched Japan, bringing the death toll from a heat wave to at least 56, officials and press reports said.

The sweaty weather has sent hundreds of people to hospitals and raised fears of an eventual power shortage, with Japan's largest nuclear power plant shut down since an earthquake last month.

At least 56 people have died this month in the heat wave, caused by high air pressure from the hot Pacific Ocean, according to a tally by public broadcaster NHK.

The mercury rose to 40.8 degrees Celsius (105.44 F) in Gifu prefecture in central Japan mid-afternoon Friday, a day after it soared to a domestic record of 40.9 C (105.62 F) there, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

- Japan sizzled through its hottest day on record Thursday as a heat wave claimed at least nine lives and threatened power supplies strained by a recent earthquake, authorities and media reports said.

The mercury hit 105.6 degrees in the western city of Tajimi in the afternoon, breaking a previous national record of 105.4 degrees set in the Meteorological Agency said.

In the Hachioji region of Tokyo, temperatures reached 101.7 degrees, breaking the previous record of 101.3 degrees for August.

Nine people died from heatstroke, including an 84-year-old man and a teenage boy who had been taken to hospital two days ago in Tokyo, Kyodo News agency reported. Three others died from heatstroke Wednesday, it said. Many were hospitalized.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - The South is sizzling beneath a relentless sun, with temperatures hitting the triple digits here for a sixth straight day on Wednesday. Officials in Memphis said two more people had died of the heat, raising the city's death toll to seven in a little more than a week.

Much of the Southeast was under a heat advisory as temperatures topped the century mark for the 10th consecutive day in places, fueling brush fires and increasing the number of people seeking medical help. The high of 105 in St. Louis broke a 71-year-old record.

The highest temperature in the nation Tuesday was 38.6 C (101.48 F) in nearby Yonago, although it was a notch below the town's record high, the agency said.

Japan has a mostly temperate climate with strong seasonal variations. The country's all-time heat record was 40.8 C (105.44) registered in July 1933 in landlocked Yamagata, some 300 kilometres (190 miles) north of Tokyo

Permafrost serves like a platform underneath vast expanses of northern forests and wetlands that are rooted, literally, in melting permafrost in many northern ecosystems. But rising atmospheric temperatures are accelerating rates of permafrost thaw in northern regions, says MSU researcher Merritt Turetsky.

In the report, "The Disappearance of Relict Permafrost in Boreal North America: Effects on Peatland Carbon Storage and Fluxes," in a recent online edition of Global Change Biology, Turetsky and others explore whether melting permafrost can lead to a viscous feedback of carbon exchange that actually fuels future climate change.