HOHHOT -- Even the chilliest city in China is not immune to the current heat wave.

Hulun Buir City in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, registered a temperature of 44.1 degrees Celsius (111 degrees Fahrenheit) on Wednesday, the highest in the city's history, according to the local weather bureau.

Besides the increasing number of heat stroke patients, the high temperature and lack of rainfall has endangered the local prairie, the largest in China, and brought a plague of locusts.

"I dug nearly half a meter into the grassland but still did not reach wet soil, which is very rare," a herdsman said.

Though grass is usually green in midsummer, the unusually low water content of grass has posed a risk of wildfires.