Shanghai will continue to sizzle this week, with the high temperature rising to 38 C Friday, the local weather bureau forecast Wednesday.

The high temperature will be 37 C Thursday, according to the Shanghai Meteorological Bureau's forecast. Thunder showers will hit the city in the afternoon on Friday and Sunday.

The bureau issued a yellow high temperature alert at 10 am Wednesday. The yellow alert, which the bureau issues whenever the temperature is expected to surpass 35 C over the following 24 hours, is the lowest level warning on the city's three-level warning system.

The bureau has issued 15 heat warnings this year, including 14 over the first 17 days of July.

The recent hot weather has led to record breaking power demand in the city. Electricity usage peaked at 26.77 million kilowatts on July 9, breaking the previous record of 26.21 million kilowatts in 2010, said Gu Weicheng, a press officer for Shanghai Municipal Electric Power Co.

The city broke the record again on each of the next two days. On July 11, peak electricity usage hit a record of 27.51 million kilowatts, Gu said. The high temperature was 38 C.

To save electricity, the Shanghai Municipal Afforestation and City Appearance and Environmental Sanitation Administration has decided to wait to turn on the city's landscaping lighting until 7:30 pm, a half hour later than usual.

The administration will turn off the lighting at 11 pm each night.

It will turn off all landscape lighting in the city when the temperature surpasses 38 C, with the exception of the lighting on the Bund.

Shanghai's summers ranked the 16th hottest in China, according to the weather website www.mywtv.cn.

The site based its rankings on temperature data from 1981 to 2010.

Shanghai followed Jinan, Shandong Province and Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. Fuzhou, Fujian Province has the hottest summers in China, according to the website.