Rains in recent days have doused southern Mexico and Central America, initiating a rainy season that looks to come about a month and a half later than usual because of the El Nino weather phenomenon, weather forecasters said.

"I think it's the beginning of the end of the drought. The rains that have come across southern Mexico do signal a gradual change in the pattern," said Kevin Marcus, agricultural meteorologist with Cropcast Services.

But central and northern Mexico states have only seen at ease of the showers crops and raging forest fires desperately need.

Showers fell in central Mexican states on Wednesday, with brief showers reaching Tabasco state of the first time in four months. Up to 20 millimetres of rains fell on central Mexico and coffee and cocoa producingTabasco, the National Water Commission said in a statement on Thursday.

"In the rest of the country dry and hot weather will predominate," it added.

"Up there as you go North of Mexico City the dryness is going to remain pretty well established for the present time," Weather Services Corp. Mike Palmerino said, adding rains would likely hit the northern region later in the month or in July.

"It think rains will work their way North to the Mexico City area with increasing showers, but it will take another couple weeks ... by the end of the month or early July," Marcus said.

Parched soil in the northern fertile valleys have prevented farmers from planting the bulk of the nation's key corn crop, growers said. Shrunken reservoir levels have limited irrigation capacity and threaten to stilt the harvest, they said.

Agriculture officials said any revisited estimates of agriculture damage would be "premature."

"Fortunately it has begun to rain and farmers are very excited. We have not had time to make anyassessment; an evaluation would be premature," an agriculture ministry spokesman said, on condition of anonymity.

But coffee farmers have predicted months of drought in the tropical South could have claimed as much as 700,000 60-kg bags of coffee, shrinking the 1998/99 crop to about 4.0 million bags.

Mexico's worst drought in 70 years has forced farmers to plant just a fifth of the normal corn crop in the top growing state, farmers said. Reserves stood at about 20 percent of capacity, according to the Water Commission.

"Just 50,000 hectares can be planted with corn in Sonora,where the harvest is usually from 250,000 hectares," said Juan Alberto Arevalo, marketing director for Sinaloa state's Ceres International, referring to the coming Fall/Winter crop.

He said the Spring/Summer crop in the northwest was practically lost because of the lack of rains. Each hectare produces about four tonnes of corn, he added.

Mexico's agriculture minister Romarico Arroyo said last month the 1998 Spring/Summer corncrop would fall by 14 percent, or about one to two million tonnes, because of the drought.

Lower output would spur Mexico to increase its imports of grains and oilseeds for the year to about 15 million tonnes for 1998, compared to 11.4 million tonnes in 1997, he added.

In northern Nuevo Leon state, farmers hustled 2,500 cattle South in search of green pastures.