You'd think the end of summer would mean the end — or at least beginning of the end — of this year's drought, but the nation's official stat keepers on Thursday revealed otherwise.

With the Midwest corn harvest in full swing, the worst U.S. drought in decades actually worsened: 65.45 percent of the lower 48 states was in some form of drought on Tuesday, up from 64.82 percent a week earlier, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. 

The 65.45 percent is a new record in the 12-year index tracked by the monitor, and it could get worse before getting better.

"I would not be too surprised to see conditions continue to worsen if we do not see widespread rain/snow events" soon, Brian Fuchs, a climatologist who compiles the stats for the Drought Monitor, told NBC News. "The forecast does not bode well for any type of widespread improvements any time soon outside of the central and eastern Corn Belt and maybe into portions of Arkansas and Texas."

"The western and northern Great Plains have indeed continued to worsen and this has spread into the central and northern Rocky Mountains as well," he added.

Brad Rippey, a meteorologist for the Department of Agriculture, noted that the Seasonal Drought Outlook indicates any improvements are likely to "be at least partially offset by worsening conditions from the Pacific Northwest to the upper Midwest." 

Other stats from the latest Drought Monitor were not encouraging:

• Areas in extreme or exceptional drought, the two worst categories, were at 21.5 percent, up from 20.7 percent a week earlier.
• The worst drought conditions remain in the heart of the U.S. breadbasket, weather.com reported: Nebraska at 73 percent, Kansas at 51 percent and Oklahoma at 42 percent.
• Iowa: 100 percent of the nation's biggest corn producer is in some form of drought. That's the same as the previous week.
• Minnesota: 77 percent is now in drought, up from 64 percent, with extreme conditions in the northwest and spreading into southern areas, weather.com noted.
• North Dakota: 95 percent is in drought, up from 88 percent the week before.
• South Dakota: The entire state is in some form of drought, up from 96 percent.

As bad as it's been, some farmers are feeling lucky they got as much out of their harvests as they have.

"Technology and farm practices have helped compared to the last significant drought in the Corn Belt back in 1988," said Fuchs.

That technology includes seed hybrids engineered to be drought tolerant. While environmentalists are concerned genetically engineered plants will alter ecosystems, farmers are quick adopters.

Related: Drought-resistant corn seen as minimizing crop loss this year
Related: Drought-induced 'bacon shortage' not quite what it seems
Related: Time-lapse photos show drought's impact on corn field

Another factor has been Mother Nature.

"Some soybeans in the mid-South and lower Midwest were helped by late-summer rainfall, which included the remnants of Hurricane Isaac," said Rippey.

In the case of corn, "perhaps one of the biggest wild cards ... was the timing of reproduction," he added. A June/July heat wave "hammered corn in the lower Midwest," he said, while the western Corn Belt was hit by a separate heat wave in July. 

"Fields that managed to pollinate either before or after these two heat waves fared better," he said.

"Still, we lost more than one-quarter (28 percent) of the U.S. corn production from pre-drought estimates — a total of nearly 4.1 billion bushels," he said. "Nearly one-fifth (18 percent) of the U.S. soybean production, or 575 million bushels, was lost."

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NOAA

The drought ruining crops, shrinking water supplies and exacerbating wildfires intensified dramatically over the last week, U.S. forecasters reported Thursday.

The weekly Drought Monitor shows "widespread intensification" in the central U.S., the National Drought Mitigation Center said in a statement.

Across the contiguous U.S., the total area under all kinds of drought grew only slightly but the most severe categories -- extreme and exceptional -- rose from 13.5 percent to 20.5 percent -- the highest level since 2003.

The jump "this week was the largest since we started the U.S. Drought Monitor" 12 years ago, Brian Fuchs, a climatologist and Drought Monitor author, told NBC News. "This is really showing the rapid intensification of the drought due to the heat/dryness over the region with little relief for anyone."

"We’ve seen tremendous intensification of drought through Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, Arkansas, Kansas and Nebraska, and into part of Wyoming and South Dakota in the last week," Fuchs said in the center's statement.

Every state had at least a small area categorized as "abnormally dry" or worse. "It’s such a broad footprint," Fuchs said. 

The Weather Channel noted the jump is the equivalent of adding 219,000 square miles to the worst drought categories -- "an area slightly larger than the states of California and New York combined," it  noted.

Related story: Food prices to rise next year, USDA says

States posting dramatic increases in just the last week included Illinois, which went from 8 percent in extreme/exceptional drought to 70 percent, and Nebraska, which went from 5 percent to 64 percent.

In Illinois, the drought is impacting water supplies in towns like Pontiac. "The Vermillion River does not have enough flow for us to use it as our primary source of water," one field observer reported Wednesday to the Drought Mitigation Center. "We have had to switch to a secondary source of water, located in a reservoir a few miles outside of town ...  A 'dirt' like smell and taste is being noted ... We NEED rain, very soon."

The intensification also means drier soils and deteriorated pastures.

"Over 90 percent of the topsoil was short or very short of moisture in Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, with virtually all (99 percent) short or very short in Missouri and Illinois," the monitor stated. "Over 80 percent of the pasture and rangeland was in poor or very poor condition in Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana."

A longer drought index compiled by the U.S. shows this year's drought now covers the most acreage since a dry spell in 1954. Two Dust Bowl years, 1934 and 1939, also had larger drought areas in the Palmer Drought Severity Index, which dates back to 1895 but is not as detailed as the Drought Monitor.

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As if shriveled crops, dead fish, water rationing and brown lawns aren't bad enough, some residents across the Midwest and South are seeing the drought in their own homes as foundations shift in dried-up soil.

Sometimes they'll even hear the shift.

"We will get calls where homeowners hear a loud pop," John Clark, general manager at Indiana Foundation Service, told NBC News. "They'll explain that they've heard the house move."

Adding insult to injury, insurers typically consider such damage an "act of God" and thus homeowners are on the hook for funding repairs.

Clark said drought-repair business in and around Indianapolis is booming, with calls almost doubling in the last month and his crews doing about 10 home repairs a week.

Competitors are just as busy.

"I've never seen it to this magnitude, this early in the season" said Tim Combs, vice president at Helitech, a foundation and waterproofing specialist based in St. Louis, Mo. "I've been at Helitech for 19 years, and this is the driest ever."

Between 60 and 70 percent of Helitech's customer calls involve foundation repairs, Combs told NBC News, when typically it's half foundations and half waterproofing this time of year.

The problem is everywhere Helitech operates -- Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky. "The drought is so widespread that it's really balanced" as far as repair work, he said.

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Some homeowners report new cracks, Combs said, while others say small cracks have gotten worse with the dry spell.

The foundation damage is on top of drought problems that include lost corn and soy crops, fish killed by low oxygen levels in lakes and rivers, and water rationing in some cities.

In Illinois, NBC affiliate WEEK-TV reported Wednesday that the drought is causing home damage in the Peoria area. 

Similar foundation issues exist in Little Rock, Ark, NBC affiliate KARK-TV reported Monday.

Clark earlier told NBC affiliate WTHR-TV that foundation repairs tied to dry soil can cost anywhere from $1,000 up to $40,000.

Slideshow: Drought Crisis

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Homeowners should look for "doors that are sticking, windows that stick and drywall cracks," Clark said.

As for prevention, WTHR noted that some experts suggest a sprinkler around a home's foundation -- as long as no cracks currently exist. 

Related: Drought widens, outlook grim through October

Another approach is to water under an exposed slab area to beef up the soil.

"On shallow footings, crawl spaces, footings that might be under a slab of some sort you can actually water with a water hose and it can help that expansive soil swell and preserve that footing from settling," Jeff Tharp, a specialist at Helitech, told WEEK.

In Indianapolis, however, that's not on option: the drought has led to a ban on watering lawns this summer.

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The National Weather Service issued this map along with its Seasonal Drought Outlook on Thursday.

A double-barreled dose of bad news came out Thursday: Not only did the drought worsen over the last week, but it's likely to widen and intensify through the end of October, according to the seasonal outlook prepared by government forecasters.

"Unfortunately, all indicators (short and medium-term, August, and August-October) favor above normal temperatures," the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center said in its Seasonal Drought Outlook released Thursday. 

"We don't see a reason to say it will improve," Kelly Helm Smith, a specialist at the National Drought Mitigation Center, told reporters. "I'm in the Midwest," she said, referring to her office at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, "it's really unpleasant."

The outlook noted that "a dramatic shift in the weather pattern" would be required "to provide significant relief to this drought, and most tools and models do not forecast this."

Drought could take hold in the northern plains by October, the Climate Prediction Center added.

Moreover, last week saw a continued "downward spiral of drought conditions," according to the weekly Drought Monitor issued Thursday.

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Nearly 81 percent of the contiguous U.S. was "abnormally dry" or in drought, weather.com reported in analyzing the data, while 64 percent was in some degree of drought, up 3 percentage points from the previous week. About 42 percent was "severe" or worse.

The monitor also noted these dire indicators for food production:

• 38 percent of the U.S. corn crop was in "poor to very poor condition" -- up from 30 percent a week ago;
• 30 percent of soybeans were in poor to very poor condition -- up from 27 percent. 
• 54 percent of pastures and rangelands were in poor to very poor condition -- up from 50 percent and an all-time high since that measure began in 1995.  
• Stream flows were at or near  record low values across much of the Midwest and parts of the central Plains, West, Southeast, and even parts of New England. 

Forecasters have called the drought the most widespread since 1956, though 1988 was worse in terms of crop losses due to an extremely dry year for the Midwest.

Experts said that could still change.

"It's too soon to know how much this one will cost" since farmers are still harvesting, Helm Smith told NBC News. 

"There's a possibility that this could get worse," added Jake Crouch, an expert at the National Climatic Data Center.

"It's something to keep an eye on in the next couple of weeks," he told NBC News.

The federal government on Wednesday added 39 more counties to its drought disaster list, speeding up low-cost loans for farmers and ranchers. That's now 1,297 counties across 29 states with access to those loans.

Related: Sagging homes a sign of the times

The head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, said it was particularly painful for farmers because they planted for bumper crops, with many now instead potentially facing bankruptcy.

"Part of the problem we're facing is that weather conditions were so good at the beginning of the season that farmers got in the field early, and as a result this drought comes at a very difficult and painful time in their ability to have their crops have good yield," Vilsack told reporters Wednesday after briefing President Barack Obama on the drought. 

"I get on my knees everyday and I'm saying an extra prayer right now," he added. "If I had a rain prayer or a rain dance I could do, I would do it." 

Slideshow: Drought Crisis

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FlyDrake.com via Glacier Bay National Park

Rock and debris from a landslide lie along five miles of what had been an ice-white glacier inside Glacier Bay National Park.

A massive landslide sent tons of rock and debris tumbling more than five miles down a glacier in Alaska, the National Park Service reported in an event that could be yet another sign of a warming world.

Located in a remote area of Glacier Bay National Park, the slide was so big it registered on earthquake monitors as a magnitude 3.4 event.

Officials noticed the monitor blip on June 11 but it wasn't until July 2 that a pilot passing over the site took photos that showed just how large it was, Glacier Bay National Park announced on its Facebook page.

"It's certainly the largest that we're aware of" inside the park, Glacier Bay ecologist Lewis Sharman told msnbc.com.

Larger landslides have happened over geologic time, Marten Geertsema, a natural hazards researcher for the Forest Service in nearby British Columbia, told msnbc.com, but it definitely was "one of the longest runout landslides on a glacier in Alaska and Canada in recent times."

Moreover, the force was enormous, Geertsema said. No one was present, but had anyone been there they probably "would be blown over by the air blast," he told the Associated Press. 

Officials ruled out an earthquake as the trigger that caused part of the nearly 12,000-foot Lituya Mountain to give way, smothering the ice-white Johns Hopkins Glacier with dark rock and debris over an area a half-mile wide and 5.5 miles long.

Drake Olson / FlyDrake.com via AP

The landslide is viewed from above the Johns Hopkins Glacier.

One possibility is that thawing permafrost, which is ground that stays frozen for two more our years, caused the slide.

"We are seeing an increase in rock slides in mountain areas throughout the world because of permafrost degradation," said Geertsema. 

"I don't know whether permafrost degradation played a role here, but we can be almost certain that permafrost exists on Lituya Mountain," said Geertsema, who reviewed aerial photos of the mountain and slide area. "Certainly this type of event could happen from permafrost degradation."

Many areas of mountain permafrost have been thawing in recent decades as temperatures warm, and some experts are becoming convinced that thawing is a factor in the frequency of rock slides, Geertsema said, pointing to data by Swiss scientists studying the Alps.

Marten Geertsema and Drake Olson

The section of rock and ice that slid off Lituya Mountain is seen here. Marten Geertsema estimates it was 200 meters, or about 600 feet, wide.

"It plays an important role," Geertsema said of climate change. "I think we have been underestimating the role it might play." 

Sharman, the park ecologist, echoed that sentiment, saying he's heard from experts that "they would not be surprised" to see more such landslides inside the national park if temperatures continue to warm.

"Certainly we are seeing an increase in large landslides over the past decades," Geertsema said, citing his 2006 study that found between 1973 and 2003 the average in northern British Columbia increased from 1.3 large landslides per year to 2.3.

Moreover, he said, most of the slides in northern British Columbia are happening in the warmest years.

Landslides like this one can also be triggered by other factors, Geertsema added, such as a combination of large snowpack and a cold spring that results in a delayed and then rapid melt.

The slide itself was miles from areas used by park visitors, most of whom see Glacier Bay by cruise ship. 

"You can't see it from a boat or the bay. You've got to be up flying. And it's not on a typical flying route," park service spokesman John Quinley told Reuters. "It would have been pretty horrific if you'd been camped on the glacier."

And it won't reach the bay for a long time.

"The landslide is approximately 12-14 miles up the glacier," the park said on its Facebook page, and the glacier itself moves material towards the bay only about 10-15 feet a day. "So this debris may not reach the face of the glacier for many years," it added.

Officials are currently trying to estimate the volume of material that fell in the slide.

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In 1958, a nearby landslide, this one above Lituya Bay and triggered by a 7.7 earthquake, created a wave hundreds of feet high that washed 1,720 feet up a narrow inlet. Two people on a fishing boat vanished and three others on land were killed. 

One fishing vessel was able to ride out the wave, Geertsema noted.

"They looked below them and they could see the tops of the Sitka spruce trees way below," he said. "The other boat disappeared."

Last month's slide covered more land area than the 1958 incident, but even so it probably won't go down as the biggest one by volume in North America.

"We do not know the volume of the recent landslide on the Johns Hopkins Glacier yet, but it is unlikely to break the volume record," Rex Baum, a U.S. Geological Survey expert, told msnbc.com.

What is the record? That, said Baum, would be the 2.8 cubic kilometer rock slide avalanche from the May 18, 1980, eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state.  

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From exploding hay bales to a sprinkler ban in Indianapolis, the Midwest and Plains states continue to be tested by a hot, dry summer.

A drought update Thursday didn't offer much hope either: 61 percent of the contiguous U.S. was listed in drought, up from 56 percent last week, according to the National Weather Service's Drought Monitor. 

"Anytime we have a drought maturing in mid-summer, the chances for rapid intensification will be there," Gary McManus, Oklahoma's associate state climatologist, told msnbc.com. "Even normal heat and dry conditions can speed that drought along."

More than 1,000 counties in 26 states were named natural-disaster areas on Thursday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The move gives that designation to any county in severe drought for eight consecutive weeks, speeding up low-cost loan assistance to farmers. 

Representing a third of all U.S. counties, it's the largest ever USDA disaster declaration, the Bloomberg news service reported.

Michael Conroy / AP file

A dock extends into a dry cove at Morse Reservoir in Noblesville, Ind., on July 5. The central Indiana reservoir is down 3.5 feet from normal levels.

Besides dried up fields, farmers from Iowa to Oklahoma in recent weeks have reported hay bales catching fire through spontaneous combustion.

Near Salix, Iowa, five fire departments responded to a hay fire on Tuesday that quickly consumed a storage facility, NBC affiliate KTIV reported.

While that can happen any time there's moisture in hay mixed with heat, this summer is particularly dangerous after late spring rains provided the needed moisture in the hay.

"The chance of hay bales spontaneously combusting is higher when we’ve had a lot of rain," Nigel Collinson, director of Agrical, a major insurance adjuster, told Farmers Weekly in June as the hay baling season was in full swing.

In western Oklahoma, where hay bales also recently burst into flames, the threat of brush and grassland fires is greater this year than last because the state enough spring rain to allow vegetation to grow.

"The rains allowed the growth to get up pretty good, so there are a lot of troubles this year," Mike Karlin, assistant chief of the Weatherford Fire Department, told the Associated Press. "That moisture has gone and it's gotten extremely dry out. 

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"We're dealing with a situation that's fast approaching what we saw last year," he said, referring to the drought that started in 2010 and left much of the landscape cracked and dry.

In Indiana, water rationing has spread to Indianapolis. Plummeting reservoirs have led to a ban, starting Friday, on watering lawns with sprinklers. Plants, flowers and trees can still be watered with a hose.

Fines start at $100, increasing up to $2,500 for repeat offenders.

"If we have some people who are solidly abusing it we're certainly going to make an example," Mayor Greg Ballard told NBC affiliate WTHR-TV. 

Indianapolis is going through its longest dry spell in 104 years of records, weather.com noted. Since June 1, just .09 inches of rain have fallen there, when the average is closer to 6 inches.

Nearly a third of Indiana was listed as in "extreme drought" in the latest Drought Monitor, up from 23 percent last week. Nearly all of the rest of the state is seeing either severe or moderate conditions.

In northeast Indiana, rainfall in some parts is 11 inches below normal for the last three months, according to the monitor.

In Indiana and 17 other key corn-growing states, "30 percent of the crop is now in poor or very poor condition, up from 22 percent the previous week," the report stated. "In addition, fully half of the nation’s pastures and ranges are in poor or very poor condition, up from 28 percent in mid-June.

"The hot, dry conditions have also allowed for a dramatic increase in wildfire activity since mid-June," the report noted. "During the past 3 weeks, the year-to-date acreage burned by wildfires increased from 1.1 million to 3.1 million (acres) as of this writing."

Other parts of the Midwest are rationing water as well. In Kansas, the town of Russell this week approved restrictions. So too have many towns in Illinois and Wisconsin.

Rain is forecast for some drought areas over the next week, but overall the outlook remains grim for what's the most widespread drought since 1988.

Warming raised odds of Texas drought last year, study finds

"Unfortunately, parts of the Plains from the Texas Panhandle, Oklahoma and Kansas potentially eastward into Illinois and Indiana may see little significant rainfall over the next 5-7 days," weather.com meteorologist Jon Erdman warned in his drought post.

"Rainfall is the cure," added McManus, "but it is normally in short supply during July and August."

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Trying to get beyond the standard scientific disclaimer that no single weather event can be pinned on global warming, government scientists on Tuesday unveiled a new framework: what are the odds of a specific event being impacted by warming?

They tested it on several extreme events in 2011 -- a strong La Nina year -- and, in the case of the record Texas drought, concluded that such severe dry spells are 20 more times likely during a La Nina year today than a La Nina in the 1960s, before greenhouse gas emissions jumped. 

"Conditions leading to droughts such as the one that occurred in Texas in 2011 are, at least in the case of temperature, distinctly more probable than they were 40-50 years ago," researchers concluded in a new study.

"It's quite striking," Peter Stott told reporters Tuesday at a briefing organized by his employer, Britain's weather service, and the U.S. National Climatic Data Center.

"We can now quantify the changed odds" due to climate change and thus start to assess risk levels, added Stott, who edited the study along with peers from the U.S. data center.

The study focused on La Nina conditions, Stott noted, but future research will look at non-La Nina years as well.

La Nina, which cools Pacific waters, alternates with El Nino, which warms Pacific waters. Both can impact weather worldwide and in La Nina's case it typically warms up the southern U.S. 

As the science behind the framework improves, Stott said, "we'll be able to address more difficult questions" about the relationship between severe weather and climate change. 

The Texas component of the study compared rainfall and temperature data from La Nina years in the 1960s (1964, 1967, 1968) to present day (2011 data was not yet available so the scientists used 2008, another strong La Nina year.)

The amount of computer processing time needed was enormous, so the scientists reached out to an existing network of "citizen scientists" who allow their networked computers to be used at off-hours, Tom Peterson of the U.S. climate data center told msnbc.com.

The study reached conclusions about other extreme events last year as well, but only provided odds for the cold/warm extremes seen in Britain.

U.S.: First half of 2012 warmest on record

December 2010 was extremely cold in Britain, but the odds of that happening have been halved due to climate change, the study concluded. November 2011 was extremely warm, an event that's now 60 times more likely than in the 1960s, the data show.

Several other extreme weather events were studied using different methodologies, which did not calculate the odds that warming had an impact.

Still, a climate role was ruled out in Thailand's worst flooding in 70 years. That flooding was not accompanied by higher than normal rainfall, the experts noted. They instead cited flood-control decisions on the ground as key factors.

Two other events -- East Africa's drought and Western Europe's heat wave -- appear to have been influenced by warming in addition to La Nina, the study stated, but the extent was not quantified.

The study, the first of what is expected to be an annual look back at extremes and climate, was published in the July issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

It was announced in conjunction with the 22nd annual global State of the Climate report released by the U.S. and the American Meteorological Society.

The 43 indicators tracked in 2011 -- ranging from thinning Arctic sea ice to more acidic oceans -- continued to show a warming trend, according to the State of the Climate report.

"Those indicators," said Thomas Karl, head of the National Climatic Data Center, "show what we expect to see in a warmer world."

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Gil Aegerter / msnbc.com

The sunset in Seattle, Wash., on Sunday drew this crowd at Gasworks Park.

The Pacific Northwest and Canada's British Columbia can thank Russia for some fantastic sunsets in recent days. Smoke from several dozen wildfires in Siberia has been wafting over the Pacific, turning the skies a brilliant red and orange at dusk. The downside has been some rather hazy daylight at times.

"It isn’t uncommon for smoke from large wildfires in Siberia to be lofted high enough into the atmosphere that winds push plumes of it across the Pacific Ocean to North America," NASA noted on its Earth Observatory website while showing a satellite view of the smoke.

In Seattle, University of Washington meteorologist Cliff Mass tipped off followers of his blog that the smoke would produce some red sunsets along the coast and northwest parts of the state. 

But the smoke has also meant some haze, especially farther north in British Columbia, Claire Martin, a meteorologist for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., said on the CBC website.

"It's looping below the Aleutians and then back to Vancouver," Martin said of the smoke.

NASA last month reported its scientists were tracking the smoke now that wildfire season has started in Russia and other parts of Asia. 

"The smoke plumes were lofted up to at least 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) from the intense heat of the fires," NASA scientist Colin Seftor stated of an event in early June. "At that point the smoke got picked up by higher level winds."

"Not only smoke and dust can get carried long distance," he added. "Pollutants, and even disease-carrying spores can be carried by the prevailing winds."

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M. Spencer Green / AP

Chicago Housing Authority Asset Manager Sondrae Lewis, takes part in a well-being check on Bessie Rogers, 83, at her home in Apartamentos Las Americas on Friday.

Chicago on Friday suffered through a third straight day above 100 degrees — the first such string since 1947 — but that didn't stop seniors from their regular aerobics class at the city's Levy Senior Center. If anything, the heat was an incentive given the air-conditioned refuge. 

"They're very happy to get inside," said Joyce Gallagher, executive director for the city agency that oversees 21 senior centers.

But she was also clear that the centers aren't shelters to come in for a nap. "It isn't a place where you come and sit to get some cool air," Gallagher emphasized. "It's a place where you come to participate and socialize — and coincidentally it's air-conditioned."

It's normally in the mid-80s this time of year in Chicago, but this week has been special: 103 degrees on Friday, and the humidity made it feel like 108. Thursday also saw 103, which is just 2 degrees shy of Chicago's all-time record, set in 1934. Wednesday topped out at 102.

The 95-year-old woman's death on Tuesday might have been heat related, officials said, but an autopsy was inconclusive, NBCChicago.com reported. Heat stress was determined to be a contributing factor in the deaths this week of two men, one 53 and the other 48, both of whom were obese and died of heart disease.

Related: Tips for seniors to avoid heat stress

Tens of thousands of Chicagoans also lost power during the weekend storms that impacted millions across the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic.

At the National Weather Service's Chicago office, which itself lost power for a day, meteorologist Amy Seeley said the stretch above 100 should end Friday. Saturday will still be hot, but by Sunday temps should be back to the 80s.

The weather service has received plenty of calls from residents asking about records, she said, adding that no one there was around to compare the 1947 heat wave to this week's.

The Chicago office did post a comparison of past heat waves, noting that the deadliest is by far the July 1995 stretch that contributed to some 600 deaths. 

Gallagher, for her part, isn't jealous of city summer school staff who got time off this week when classes were suspended due to the heat.

"It's a little different than schools," she said of the senior centers like Levy, where about 100 people did aerobics Friday while 30 were shooting pool and a few others played table tennis. "Working with individuals that are very energetic and life giving is something to look forward to."

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A storm that tore through Tennessee killed at least four people while tossing boats, tipping over trailers at a campground and toppling hundreds of trees with winds up to 70 mph.

A child and her grandmother died when a double-decker pontoon boat on a Chattanooga lake capsized after being hit by a strong gust, Dan Hicks, a spokesman with the state's Wildlife Resources Agency, told msnbc.com. The grandmother had been hospitalized but later died of her injuries.

The storm "came up really quick ... they were trying to get back to the bank," said Hicks, who noted the high profile of the boat probably contributed to the accident.

"It was the fastest storm I've ever seen," witness Stan Crawley told The Chattanoogan. "It was fine, then two minutes later the storm was here. The waves were three and four feet high. We saw the pontoon boat flip on its top."

The other two deaths, and eight injuries, were at Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Teams on Friday were searching for more victims from the Thursday evening storm, but felt confident the toll would not rise. While rangers "have not walked all trails," spokesman Carey Jones told msnbc.com, all visitors "appear to be accounted for" based on a search of main roads and public areas.

Jeff Farrell / The Mountain Press via AP

The roof of the Carl Ownby & Co. hardware store, background center, sits on the Juvenile Detention Center, foreground right, in Sevierville, Tenn., on Thursday after winds ripped it off and hurled it across a five-lane street. No injuries were reported.

A man riding a motorcycle died when hit by a tree limb and a woman was crushed to death by a falling tree that injured three others, the park said in a statement. A girl, 7, and her father were airlifted to a hospital. Their conditions were not known. The girl's mother suffered minor injuries.

Much of the damage was at the popular Cades Cove.

Staff from other parks were being brought in to help with the search and cleanup, the Knoxville News Sentinel reported. "We're calling all hands on deck," said Deputy Park Superintendent Kevin Fitzgerald. "The most important thing right now is to get crews safely in there to assess what's going on."

Many roads inside the park were blocked by trees, and access into the park was blocked on the highway leading out of Townsend.

On nearby Douglas Lake, many boats at Mountain Cove Marina were destroyed or damaged.

Mark Northern said he was in his houseboat at the marina when the storm hit.

"It just took me and everybody on that dock like we were just toys," he told NBC affiliate WBIR-TV. "It happened so fast that I didn't even know where I was until I walked out to the front of the houseboat ... there was wreckage as high as you could see."

Several trailers were knocked over at a campground in Wears Valley, the Knoxville News Sentinel reported

The storm cut power to some 56,000 households in eastern Tennessee, including parts of Knoxville. The local utility said it could take several days for power to be restored to everyone.

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The prolonged heat across the Midwest has not only set temperature records, it is also expanding and intensifying drought conditions -- and relief isn't on the horizon for most areas, the National Weather Service reported Thursday.

Drought conditions are present in 56 percent of the continental U.S., according to the weekly Drought Monitor.

That's the most in the 12 years that the data have been compiled, topping the previous record of 55 percent set on Aug. 26, 2003. It's also up five percentage points from the previous week.

The drought hasn't been long enough to rank up there with the 1930s Dust Bowl or a bad stretch in the 1950s, David Miskus, a meteorologist at the weather service's Climate Prediction Center, told msnbc.com.

"We don't have that here yet," he said. "This has really only started this year."

But for a single year it's still pretty significant, not far behind an extremely dry 1988.

While 1988 saw much drier conditions and an earlier start to the drought than this year, said Brad Rippey, a meteorologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2012 has its own interesting qualities.

"This year the high temperatures have certainly played into this drought," he told msnbc.com. "There's a lot more evaporation ... and crop demands for water."

The Drought Monitor noted that the drought is starting to "take a significant toll" on food supplies. "In the primary growing states for corn and soybeans, 22 percent of the crop is in poor or very poor condition, as are 43 percent of the nation’s pastures and rangelands and 24 percent of the sorghum crop."

"July 4–8, 2012, doesn’t look promising in terms of relief," it added. "Modest improvement is forecast for most areas that have endured the recent heat wave, but most locations from the Plains eastward are still expected to be warmer than normal."

NYT: Dust Bowl fears as Midwest heat shrivels crops

Rain and cooler temps are forecast for many areas in mid-July but over the summer "drought is likely to develop, persist or intensify" across much of the Ohio and Tennessee valleys, the Corn Belt region, the Mississippi Valley and much of the Great Plains, the weather service said Thursday in its latest Seasonal Drought Outlook.

In Tennessee, the severity of the drought has been reported by county farm agents sending comments to the National Agricultural Statistics Service office in Nashville, the Associated Press reported.

"Crops have really begun to suffer and go backwards this week. Rain is needed yesterday," wrote agent Richard Buntin in Crockett County.

Crops and pastureland are "burnt to a crispy crunch," wrote Kim Frady of Bradley County.

"Need rain," in Loudon County, added John Goddard. "Saw a farmer digging a waterline about 4-5' deep. Nothing but powder!"

The weather service on Thursday did say there's a better chance that the El Nino weather system would return by winter.

If it's a typical El Nino, that would mean better than average rainfall for the southern tier of the U.S., Miskus noted.

"Maybe there's some hope," said Rippey, "but that's way on out in the future. That's not a short term relief."

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The Japanese tsunami debris washing ashore on West Coast beaches is so far a novelty that has locals talking and tourists visiting, but those sporadic beachings will become more frequent -- and more costly to clean up.

In addition to removing the debris, and in some cases trying to reunite it with owners in Japan, crews must also deal with the threat of invasive marine species that could threaten local ecosystems if they grab a foothold.

Oregon's Department of Parks and Recreation learned first hand about the costs when a 66-foot-long dock landed on a beach near Newport last month.

Oregon Parks and Recreation Department

A volunteer on June 7 burns marine organisms off a Japanese dock that came ashore near Newport, Ore.

Volunteers helped burn non-native seaweed and other organisms clinging to the dock, and the department put in $4,300 for machinery. The state on Tuesday also accepted a bid of $84,000 to have the structure removed from the beach. Other bids ranged as high as $240,000.

"As far as who pays, there is no single budget set aside for it at this point," parks spokesman Chris Havel told msnbc.com. "We are working with the governor's office and federal legislators to try and shield coastal communities from the direct cost as much as we can, but there are no concrete answers yet."

As for the months ahead, "no one knows how much it could cost, or who will pay," Havel said. For now, the department has to "pay for it up front" with funds budgeted for other items.

At the federal level, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration awards grants for cleanup of marine debris, but that program was created before the 2011 tsunami and is meant to deal with smaller messes.

Grants have totaled up to $1 million a year recently, NOAA spokeswoman Monica Allen told msnbc.com, but the program isn't accepting new proposals until the fall. 

Even worse for Oregon, "the program does not award grants for past work done before the award," Allen said.

In Washington state, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Monday said the state has some funds set aside for tsunami debris cleanup, but it's likely not enough. "We don't have the resources at the state level to do what we're going to have to do here," she said.

Northwest Public Radio said a state ecology spokesman suggested Washington might even send Japan the bill for cleanups. "That's something that needs to be sorted through," Curt Hart said.

But the state department later said that comment was misconstrued, and that it referred to the broader issue of how to pay for cleaning up the debris. State officials have never considered asking the Japanese government for funds, the department told msnbc.com.

NOAA's Allen said the agency is working with communities to "reduce any possible impacts to our natural resources and coastal communities," but she stopped short of saying federal funds were available.

"This is an ongoing issue," she said, urging communities to keep an eye on NOAA's marine debris website. 

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