Zaina Begum stood helplessly next to her withering paddy field.

A farmer in Indian-administered Kashmir's Pulwama district, she had been waiting for rainfall for more than a month, hoping to save her crop from dying, BBC reported.

So when it finally rained earlier this week, she was hopeful. 

"But it was already too late by then," she said. "Our land had completely dried up."

The region recorded its highest daytime temperature in 70 years at 37.4C (99.32F) - at least 7C above the seasonal average, according to BBC.