Central China's Hubei Province was placed on orange alert -- the second most serious alert -- for severe weather on Thursday, marking the start of the country's season for weather-related disasters.

Under an orange alert, people living in areas prone to landslides, cave-ins and lightning strikes must be evacuated to safety, but the provincial government said it had received no reports of evacuations so far.

Workers must suspend their outdoor operations and find shelter, while communications authorities must ensure traffic guidance in areas where water collects and may impose traffic controls when necessary.

The China Meteorological Administration (CMA) warned the country to expect floods, hail and landslides.

"The downpour coupled with lightening strikes in Hubei will bring rainfall of 50 to 100 millimeters in three hours and may linger," said the CMA alert.

Last week, a lighting strike killed seven children and injured 44 in the village of Xingeye more than 300 km from downtown Chongqing.

By Saturday, rainfall is possible in most parts of southern China, with downpours or torrential rains in Chongqing, southern Guizhou, western Guangxi, some parts of Hubei, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Fujian.

Strong winds in southern Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia are expected to cause dust storms, according to the CMA forecast.

"Heavy rains, strong winds, hail and high temperatures will be frequent and pose a severe risk to the lives and livelihoods of people and economic production," the CMA warned.

It urged local governments and meteorological departments to intensify inspections of key mountainous regions and take every precaution against weather disasters.

Farmers in central and north China were asked to harvest their wheat quickly to prevent rain damage, while fish farmers were told to check drainage and reduce water levels in ponds to prevent their stocks being washed away.

"China has been suffering increasingly heavy losses from weather disasters over the past decade as a result of frequent extreme weather and rapidly expanding economic construction," said Huang Zhiyong, deputy chief of the Wuhan Central Meteorological Station.

In the past ten years, Hubei alone suffered 9.6 billion yuan indirect economic losses from weather disasters, while neighboring Hunan reported the highest losses at 15.3 billion yuan.

Zhang Xilin, director of the Bayannaoer Meteorological Bureau in Inner Mongolia of north China, advocated a proactive approach to cope with disasters and minimize damage.

"Many people are simply responding to disasters rather than preventing them. Frankly speaking, our forecasting services have not been well used," he said.

The CMA and the Ministry of Communications jointly established a foul weather forecast system in 2005 to prevent traffic accidents on expressways and national highways.

"Local communications departments often failed to take immediate precautions. When farming and livestock breeding are endangered, farmers often have no access to such alerts," said Liu Junlin, deputy director of the Bayannaoer Meteorological Bureau.

The best way to deal with extreme weather was to get accurate forecasts as early as possible and take proper measures, he said.

Southeast China's Shacheng port, where Typhoon Saomai took more than 1,000 fishing boats and destroyed half of the 8,000 households in August last year, an automatic meteorological observation station has been installed, the first of its kind in eastern Fujian Province.

According to local meteorological bureau, a total of 300 such observation stations would be put into use this year, tracking temperature, air pressure, rainfall, wind scale and humidity 24 hours a day in an attempt to provide precision forecasts.

Eight tropical cyclones attacked Fujian in 2006, inflicting direct economic losses of 20 billion yuan. This summer, one or two typhoons are expected to land, but their impact would be smaller, meteorological departments have forecast.

(Xinhua News Agency June 1, 2007)