BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - The choking dryness that's killing crops and turning streams into dusty trails across the Southeast is getting worse, with the government saying Thursday the nation's most extreme drought has expanded from Alabama into three neighboring states.

Previously contained in the northern half of Alabama, the area of most severe drought has grown like a brown ink blot to extend from eastern Mississippi across Alabama into southeastern Tennessee and northwestern Georgia.

Government meteorologists classify conditions in the region - roughly shaped like an oval on maps - as being worse even than those in southern Florida, where Lake Okeechobee is drying up, and the perennially dry West.

Overall, the entire Southeast is in at least a moderate drought, save for the southern tips of Florida and Louisiana, the northern reaches of North Carolina and Virginia and parts of Arkansas and West Virginia.

"Seeing the effects this early in the year shows we are in a really unprecedented situation," said John Christy, a professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the state climatologist for Alabama.

The arid conditions mean the atmosphere will heat up more than normal as summer approaches, making triple-digit temperatures more common across the region, he said.

The lack of water has caused police in some areas to enforce mandatory watering bans.

Thirty miles south of Birmingham in Calera, Ala. - population 11,000 - police officers on the "water detail" work day and night because some people are going to the extreme of night watering.

Police write about a dozen tickets a week and have even caught homeowners sneaking outdoors to water their brown, crunchy lawns at 1 a.m.

Violators can be fined as much as $500 in city court.

Five people paid fines for watering violations last year, when the ban also was in place, but no one has appeared in city court this year so far on the charge. Officials say the ban has helped the city keep water in its storage tanks, which hold 7 million gallons.

Long-term forecasts for the Southeast show little chance for substantial rain unless a tropical system moves north across the Gulf of Mexico to displace a high-pressure system that is blocking moisture from entering the region.

"Rainfall patterns by their nature are variable. This is just where (the drought) happens to be this time," Christy said.

For a drought map and related information, visit the U.S. Drought Monitor at http://www.drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html.

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