(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-06-09 15:33

BEIJING -- China Meteorological Administration (CMA) on Monday continued to issue the orange alert warning, the second most critical level after red, for rainstorms in the south.

People wade through knee-deep water on a Hong Kong street after the city was lashed by rainstorms as was most of South China yesterday. So intense was the downpour in Hong Kong that its weather office had to issue the highest rainstorm warning. [Xinhua]

The CMA issues an orange alert only when the precipitation is expected to exceed 50 millimeters within 3 hours, or more rain is forecasted after the precipitation has exceeded 50 mm.

The administration also warned high temperature, from 35 to 39 degrees Celsius, in the southern provinces and regions including Jiangxi, Hunan, Hubei, Guizhou, Guangxi and Sichuan.

The Ministry of Agriculture has ordered to get every grain to granary as the persisting torrential rain hampered the critical yearly harvest in south China.

Local authorities were asked to pay high alert on the rare torrential rain and make efforts to prevent agriculture production from being influenced by the bad weather, the ministry said in an urgent notice on Sunday.

The latest forecast from the National Meteorological Center (NMC) said that the heavy rain, 30 to 70 percent more than the same period last year in general, was set to sweep most parts of south China in the coming 10 days.

The bad weather was expected to pose serious danger to agriculture production considering its long spell and massive scale.

In China, summer grain usually takes up about 23 percent of the nation's annual grain output.

"If no severe disastrous weather conditions develop, the unit production of the nation's summer grain harvest will hit a record high with the total output rising for a fifth consecutive year," Minister of Agriculture Sun Zhengcai said.

However, torrential rain began to haunt south China at the end of last month, confounding the harvesting efforts. The NMC on Saturday morning launched a level-three emergency response to cope with expected rainstorms in the southern provinces.

The deluge has killed at least 83 people since last month and damaged houses, crops, and industrial plants.