Winter Returns As an Unwelcome Guest
It looks like Old Man Winter is going to take one more shot at Georgia over the next few days, and that could be bad news for gardeners and farmers across the state for a second year in a row. The Weather Service is calling for low temperatures in Lawrenceville of 36 degrees on Sunday night and Tuesday night, and 34 degrees Monday night. Across the state, lows are expected to be in the upper 30s Monday morning, and 31 in Atlanta, 32 in Athens, and 30 in Macon on Tuesday morning.
Accuweather.com is calling for lows of 34 on Sunday night, 30 Monday night and 39 Tuesday Night, while Weather.com says it will be 36 Sunday night, 31 on Monday and 33 on Tuesday. In comparison, temperatures dropped to 28 degrees the nights of April 6 and 7, 2007, the infamous Easter Freeze that caused widespread damage to spring flowers and crops.
My guess is that the damage won’t be as bad as what we saw last year– it looks like it will be a little warmer– but I wouldn’t suggest you plant any annuals this weekend. You should also bring in any houseplants or container plants you’ve set outside until at least Wednesday. If the worst does happen, Walter Reeves has a good article on coping with freeze damage.
The Gwinnett Daily Post on Friday splayed its front page with the apocalyptic headline, “Rising, But Not Enough - Drought Still in Full Force.” While the premise of the article is correct, that Lake Lanier won’t reach it’s normal full pool level by May, I would take issue with the “full force” part of the headline It looks like Lanier’s pool will have risen by seven feet from its low point, while in a normal year, the lake would recharge by 8 or 9 feet. Rainfall this year is normal, with the exception of January.
Atlanta’s official precipitation measurement as of yesterday was 16.54 inches, 1.75 below normal for the year. However, that’s almost twice the amount of precipitation we had through the same day in 2007, which was 8.41 inches. By my reckoning, it was sometime in June, 2007 before we had the amount of rain we’ve seen so far this year.
The drought took a few years of less than normal precipitation to get us to where we are now, and the only magic wand that could get us back to normal quickly would be some tropical activity coming our way this summer. But, I would argue we may have turned the corner on the worst of the drought.
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