When there is a warm updraft of air and convergence of fire, say from a wildfire, a vortex of flame can occur. As the heated air from the fire rises, strong air currents cause flame to spin, shaping it into a tornado.

ake Sidney Lanier, metro Atlanta's main source of water, has about three months of storage left, according to state and federal officials.

That's three months before there's not enough water for more than 3 million metro Atlantans to take showers, flush their toilets and cook. Three months before there's not enough water in parts of the Chattahoochee River for power plants to make the steam necessary to generate electricity. Three months before part of the river runs dry.

"We've never experienced this situation before," state Environmental Protection Division Director Carol Couch said of the record-breaking drought and fast-falling lake.

In two weeks, Couch plans to give Gov. Sonny Perdue a list of options to further restrict water use by businesses and industries, along with an analysis of potential water savings and estimated job losses. Some exemptions to the state's ban on outdoor watering in north Georgia could end, including those applied to water-dependent businesses such as car washes, pressure washing companies and landscapers. Couch's staff is still working on the details.

"It's not unheard of for the area to experience a dust storm, but it's not an everyday type of thing," said meteorologist Jaime Meier in the weather service's Oxnard office.

Like the rest of California, the Antelope Valley has been bone-dry this year, receiving less than two inches of rain. The dryness means dirt and sand are not packed down in the ground and are more likely to swirl in the face of strong winds.

"It's just loose and is able to impact visibility just the same way as a blizzard," Meier said.

Rattlesnakes - everywhere. More than Bo Slyapich has seen in his 20-year career as a snake wrangler. The prolonged drought and extreme heat have combined to drive the thirsty and venomous creatures too close for comfort - back decks, play equipment - anywhere they can find shade.

What do they want?

"Food. Just like you go to the supermarket to go shopping, they come to our homes to go shopping," Slyapich says.

Not too far from the steps to homeowner Tom Mahan's family pool, there was a four-foot rattlesnake.

He's found them even sipping from his pool. Now he's taken protective measures.

"Half-inch grid galvanized fencing around the three-acre perimeter here, which keeps 99 percent of any kind of snakes out," Mahan said.

Deer and coyotes are coming down from the hills, too. A disoriented bear climbed up a utility pole in triple-digit heat.

"It is uncharted territory," said Paul Edelman of the Santa Monica Mountain Conservatory. "It is the equivalent of the stories you see on the big droughts in the African Serengetti plains where the animals drop three feet in front of the water hole."

"It's a grim situation," said Herman Schumacher, the owner of a livestock market in Herreid, S.D., a small town near the North Dakota line where 37,000 head of cattle were sold from May through July, compared with 7,000 in the corresponding three months last year. "There's absolutely no grass in the pastures, and the water holes are all dried up. So a lot of people have no choice but to sell off their herds and get out of the business."

Drought experts say parts of the states most severely affected - Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana and Wyoming - have been left in far worse shape because of recent history: several years of dry conditions, a winter with little snow and then, with moisture reserves in the soil long gone, a wave of record heat this summer.

By late August, rain had fallen several times in some areas, but Bob Hall, an extension crops specialist at South Dakota State University, said it amounted to "a drip in a bucket."

"The bottom line is that even if we got relief starting today, at this minute," Dr. Hall said, "it would take a few years economically to recover."