Next Six Weeks Critical to Reducing Drought
The rain we’ve had so far this winter has helped to reduce the drought’s impact on Lake Lanier, with the lake level now about a foot above its record low back in mid-December. Our best hope for a major turnaround lies in the likelihood of some significant rainfall from now through the end of March.
February and March typically are some of the wettest months of the year, with an average of 4.7 and 5.4 inches of precipitation respectively. So far, February is running slightly below normal, but with more than half an inch of rain predicted for Sunday and a storm the weekend of the 22nd that could bring over an inch, we could quickly get to normal. The Climate Prediction Center is calling for a better than normal chance of rain for the period between the 21st and the 29th.
The Southeast River Forecast Center says that what would help refill the lakes the most is two storms a few days apart, each dropping over 2 inches of rain. What we’ve had this winter has been storms a week or so apart dropping less than an inch of rain. While this type of pattern has allowed the top layers of the ground to return to normal moisture, it hasn’t provided the excess runoff that would make a big dent in the low lake levels.
The Forecast Center put out a video this week that goes into more detail on this point, and provides some guidance on what to expect. You can watch the video here.
The bottom line is that if we are going to get significant filling of Lake Lanier, February and March will be the months that do it, partially because we typically get more rain than usual during these two months, and because once the weather begins to warm up in April and the trees come out, water demand begins to increase, and it’s back to waiting for tropical weather to provide some relief.
The weather forecast office in Peachtree City has released its annual shareholder’s report for 2007 (PDF) that lists their ranking of top weather events in 2007, along with metrics on the office’s performance and improvements over the year. They rank the March 1st tornado in Sumter County that destroyed the area hospital and caused over $110 million in damage as the most significant event of the year. The August heat wave ranked second.
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February 15th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
[...] reported by the Lawrenceville Weather Blog, the next six weeks will be critical in getting the lake levels up. From their article: February [...]
February 23rd, 2008 at 2:18 am
So what do you think, has this week been any better? My gauge still shows 2 inches low for the year but hopefully we’re catching up a little.
February 23rd, 2008 at 8:38 am
Two inches low seems to be about average for the year. Atlanta has had 6.94 inches of rain this year, and is 1.74 inches below normal, while Athens has had 5.58 inches of rain, or 2.54 inches below normal precipitation. Atlanta has had about an inch and a half more rain than we had at this time last year, while Athens is over two inches ahead of last year. We had about normal rainfall in December, and February will end up about normal as well; the deficit was in January.
Lake Lanier has risen .3 feet since the rain began on Thursday, which doesn’t seem like a lot, but it will likely go up more with continuing runoff. The Yellow River at River Drive looked to be close to its banks when I drove by yesterday - certainly higher than I have seen it in a while. But, the lake is still five feet below where it was this time last year.
We’re holding our ground, but I don’t think we’ve won the war yet. More rain events like what we’ve seen over the past few days will help a lot, but it took a long time for the drought to build up, and it will take a long time for the effects to end.
April 14th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Thanks for your site! As a follow up to “The next six weeks are key”, those six weeks were February 15 through March 31. It rained around 7.4 inches over that key time period which is almost an inch more than the average rainfall for the previous ten years for the same time period. Good news for this key time period!