The death toll from rain, lightning, hail, floods and landslides has risen to 35 in China's southwestern Yunnan Province, according to the provincial civil affairs bureau Monday.

As of noon, nearly 1.9 million people from 14 of 16 cities and prefectures in the province had been affected. Two were missing and six were injured.

The natural disasters that damaged 1,620 houses, ruined 8,200 hectares of crops and forced the evacuation of 5,440 people inflicted losses of 575 million yuan (about 82 million US dollars), local authorities said.

In the eastern Anhui Province, torrential rain and flooding during the weekend affected about 541,000 people and caused losses of 135 million yuan.

Continuous downpours have lashed 12 southern provincial-level regions since June 7, including Guangdong, Guangxi, Hunan and Jiangxi. Some of these regions were hit by the heaviest rain in more than a century.

Due to the continuous rain in sweltering Shanghai, heavy fog forced the shipping movements on the Yangtze River estuary to close on Monday. The fog cloaked most of the Shanghai port early in the morning, decreasing visibility to less than 100 meters, a port official said.

More than 120 ship movements were canceled, affecting 19 overseas container vessels, according to Wusong Entry-Exit Frontier Inspection Station.

The closure accounted for the most serious impact on Shanghai shipping since the start of this year's rainy season, officials said.

"Fengshen," which weakened to a tropical storm from a typhoon after killing at least 229 in the Philippines, continued to head northwest. It is expected to bring more rain to the southern and eastern Chinese provinces.

Water in Taihu Lake, located in the Yangtze Delta plain on the border of Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, was 0.33 meters above the warning level of 3.5 meters, according to the Zhejiang Provincial Flood Control and Draught Relief Headquarters.

Taihu is China's third-largest freshwater lake, covering an area of about 2,400 square kilometers.

As the rain was expected to reach 55 to 70 centimeters in the next two days, the anti-flood work at the lake was in a critical stage, officials said.

Local authorities of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai have been ordered to drain out lake water and prepare to combat a potential big flood.

(Xinhua News Agency June 23, 2008)