Georgia State Climatologist David Stooksbury says the drought isn’t getting any better.

Tropical Storm Fay brought beneficial rain to Georgia in late August. But a very dry September has led to the return of low stream flows across the state and worsened drought conditions.

All streams in Georgia except those originating in the extreme southern counties are extremely low. Most streams in the state’s northern half are at or near record low flows for this time of the year.

Stooksbury also says that Lake Lanier is at a record low for this time of year, and indicates that when the new Georgia drought map comes out on Thursday, it will show conditions worsening compared to the previous report.

Unfortunately, the chances of a tropical storm helping the situation are diminishing by the day:

The probability for meaningful drought relief over the next couple of weeks is low. October is still in the tropical storm season. But the likelihood of tropical weather impacting Georgia diminishes rapidly as the month progresses.

You can also look at this comment for some insight into how dry September 2008 was.

Normally at the beginning of each month, I do a post on some of the weather records from the previous month. This month’s notable record, however, has less to do with the weather than it does with the atmosphere. The Daily Tech is reporting that August was the first month in 100 years with no sunspots. Why is this significant? Historical record show that the lack of sunspots correlate closely with periods of global cooling. According to the article,

In the past 1000 years, three previous such events — the Dalton, Maunder, and Spörer Minimums, have all led to rapid cooling. One was large enough to be called a “mini ice age”. For a society dependent on agriculture, cold is more damaging than heat. The growing season shortens, yields drop, and the occurrence of crop-destroying frosts increases.

Now, I won’t say we’re going into a mini Ice Age. But, global temperatures have not been following the model predicted by the global warming agonistes; instead the increase in temperature has leveled off in recent years, corresponding to the reduced number of sunspots. Of course, since Al Gore and his crowd can’t control sunspots, much less cow flatulence, it’s much easier to blame carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles and power plants.

Hat tip to the Drudge Report for alerting me to this article.

You may have had heard two pieces of news regarding the drought, and the Atlanta area’s ability to take water from Lake Lanier. The first bit of news is that the metro area has managed to reduce its water use by 20% in June, compared to June 2007. In Gwinnett, recent usage amounts to 77 million gallons per day, compared to 88 MGD a year ago.

While the reduced use probably mostly comes from the outdoor watering ban imposed last fall and modified this spring, it’s still remarkable that Georgians have responded to the crisis as well as they have. Another article I read says that it took residents of Cary, NC 11 years to reduce consumption by 15% in 11 years, and Tampa Bay reduced consumption by 26% in 12 years.

Realistically, though, a more or less total watering ban isn’t going to be a long-term solution to conserving water, unless we want to sacrifice the quality of life afforded by trees, grass and landscaping. More efficient toilets and appliances, less waste through leaky pipes and other techniques will need to be employed to reduce consumption while allowing conservative outdoor use, and that indeed could take years to complete.

The other major story in the news is a promise by a Federal judge that he will decide if Georgia (and the Atlanta area in particular) has the right to withdraw water from Lake Lanier. He views that question as central to coming up with answers to the ongoing water wars between Alabama, Florida and Georgia.

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After two weeks without rain in central and southern Gwinnett county, rain finally came on Wednesday evening. I recorded 1.1 inches Wednesday night, and another .22 inches today. This is the first time since back on March 19th that we’ve gotten more than an inch of rainfall in a single day.

While the plants certainly appear to be enjoying the water, I was a little surprised at how little even that much rain has affected soil moisture. As you know, I have a soil moisture meter buried in the back yard about a foot below the ground. The values it reports ‘work in reverse’, in that the lower the number reported by the gauge, the wetter the soil. It only measures up to a value of 100 — I guess when it gets that high, things are pretty dire, and you need to provide water. Also, for technical reasons, if it gets to 100 and I restart the computer, it will show a value of 0.

Anyway for the last week or so, the gauge has been pegged at the maximum 100 value. After last night’s rainfall, the value dropped to 24, which would indicate about ‘normal’ to slightly wet soil moisture. As of now, and even with today’s rainfall, the gauge is back up to 57, which would be very dry.

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I was reading an article in Tuesday’s New York Times about Barack Obama’s decision to hold his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention in August at Invesco Stadium at Mile High Field in Denver.

In particular, this sentence caught my eye:

But Mrs. [Obama campaign strategist Anita] Dunn said the campaign had studied the weather patterns and was confident that it would not rain.

Now, I know how hard it is to predict what the weather will be more than a few days in advance. But deciding that no rain will fall during the August 28th event seems to exude the same type of confidence in weather models that global warming activists have used in making their calculations of what conditions will be 50 years from now.