Seventeen flood-related deaths were reported in Guangdong Province with 12 others confirmed in central China's Hubei by Wednesday, according to the reports.

The heavy rainfall has resulted in the collapse of many houses, held up traffic on some roads and damaged a number of ponds and irrigation facilities, local flood-control authorities said.

And according to a senior expert with the Beijing-based State Flood-Control and Drought Relief Headquarters, the worst flooding in the south "has yet to come.''

Most of south China's flooding on local rivers has been caused by torrential rains with extreme precipitation exceeding 100 millimeters per hour in parts of Guangdong, Fujian provinces and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous region, said the expert, who declined to be named.

According to the expert, one of the most significant factors leading to such flooding is the lack of major flood-control projects along some local rivers and of large reservoirs capable of holding up and regulating massive flood waters caused by rainstorms, he said.

Groups of experts have been sent out to check the safety of key reservoirs throughout China prior to the year's flood season, the expert said, adding that at least 30 percent of them must be operated with hidden perils, such as leakages caused by ageing.

Some meteorologists attributed the abnormal weather plaguing China during the first half of this year to the El Nino phenomenon, the occasional warming of surface waters in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean.

In China, the season's rainy belt moves with the monsoon which is driven by atmospherical circulation.

This year the monsoon has stayed in the south China, causing excessive rainy days in the south and leading to severe drought in the north.

(China Daily 06/14/2001)