The effects of a severe autumn drought, said to be one of the worst in the last 50 years, are still being felt in south China as the country's average rainfall for November reached its lowest level since 1989, a senior meteorologist said Friday.

Jiao Meiyan, head of the Department of Forecasting Services and Disaster Mitigation under the China Meteorological Administration, said that "areas obviously stricken by drought" had spread from the south of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River to southwest China since the middle of October.

"The drought, rarely seen since 1951, is still continuing," said Jiao, without saying how many people were affected.

In eastern Shandong Province, November's precipitation was the lowest since 1951, while the amount of rainfall in Guizhou and Shaanxi was the second lowest since that year.

Except for some plateaus and part of the southwest, most parts of the country were short of rain in November, with an average of 10.1 millimeters nationwide, compared with a normal level of 17.5 millimeters, she said.

The provinces of Jiangxi, Hunan and Guizhou were suffering from the most severe drought, said Zhang Qiang, an expert with the National Climate Center.

The water level dropped to 35 percent of its normal level in Poyang Lake, the country's largest fresh-water lake in Jiangxi, he said. "Many lakes in these provinces have dried up."

Jiao also said that the average temperature in the country was one degree centigrade higher than the historical average for the same period.

(Xinhua News Agency December 1, 2007)