Gwinnett County today revised its watering restrictions to allow hand watering as permitted by state guidelines, but held off on making changes to its policy for watering of professionally installed landscaping.

As you may remember, in mid-February, the county revised the watering restrictions it had put in place in December to allow filling of swimming pools. It also modified its rules regarding watering of professionally installed landscaping to allow watering on 10 days within 30 days of installation if a sign was posted and the homeowner had completed an online course. The county’s guidelines were set to expire on March 31st.

In March, the county commission delegated the authority for managing watering restrictions during the drought to county administrator Jock Connell. He decided today to relax the restrictions on hand watering to those allowed by the state. That means you can use a hose with a hand-activated nozzle to water your plants for up to 25 minutes three days per week, on an odd-even schedule. People with even numbered addresses can water on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, while people with odd numbered addressed can water on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. All watering must be done between midnight and 8 AM. Food gardens can be watered anytime, and the you are not allowed to use your 25 minute window to wash your car.

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For the moment, the weather seems to be running about a month ahead of the calendar. With daytime temperatures in the upper 60s for the past few days, Atlanta is now running about 5.5 degrees above normal in February. Enjoy the nice weather while it lasts, because the current thinking by the meteorologists is that a cooldown is ahead, beginning this weekend.

For the first part of President’s day week, highs will be in the upper 40s to mid 50s, with lows in the low 30s. Later in the week, we could get back to high temperatures around 60, but keep in mind that the normal high for late February is 59. The Weather Service’s 6-10 day and 8-14 day outlooks both call for colder than normal temperatures for much of the eastern US. With a ridge in the western part of the country, and a trough expected for the east, it would be reasonable to expect some rain, and it looks like we’ll get that, at least for the early part of the long range period.

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With the old year drawing to a close, it’s time to review some of the significant weather events that affected Georgia during 2007. Here’s this year’s list:

#6 - South Georgia Wildfires

While this wasn’t strictly weather related, the wildfires that burned in south Georgia during late April and most of May destroyed thousands of acres of timber in the Waycross area. Smoke from the fires reached as far north as Atlanta. The fires were eventually brought under control by Tropical Storm Barry.

#5 - January Tornadoes

Tornado season struck early in 2007 as warm weather in early January caused two tornadoes to strike Coweta county in three days on January 5th and 7th. Tornadoes also struck late in the year in South Georgia, when a December 15th storm caused damage in Wilcox, Dodge and Treutlen counties. Elsewhere, a severe tornado damaged central Florida on Groundhog day, and Brooklyn, New York saw its first tornado ever on August 7th.

#4 - Tropical Weather Largely Misses Georgia

The 2007 hurricane season did little to help Georgia’s lack of rainfall. Only Tropical Storm Barry brought precipitation to south Georgia, and Humberto in mid-September was the only hurricane to make landfall in the US this year. It was still a busier than average Atlantic hurricane season, considering that hurricanes Dean and Felix marked the first time that two category 5 storms developed in the Atlantic basin the same year.

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Preliminary figures from the National Climactic Data Center indicates that nationwide, we had the seventh warmest and 22nd driest September since records began 113 years ago. Most of the country to the east of the Rocky Mountains was somewhat warmer than normal, while the west coast had close to normal temperatures. The southwest had above normal precipitation compared to averages, while the east and midwest saw below normal rainfall, and the rest of the country was about normal.

In Georgia, the average temperature of 75.6 degrees was the 44th warmest, and the state average precipitation of 2.98 inches was the 37th driest in the 113 years recorded.

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You may have expected it, but now the preliminary figures from the National Climactic Data Center are in, and they confirm that August 2007 was the second warmest on record for the country, and the warmest for Georgia and seven other southeastern states:

The average temperature of 75.4 degrees nationwide was 2.7 degrees above normal. In Georgia, the average temperature was 83.3 degrees, 4.0 degrees warmer than normal. Despite August being a record warm month for the state, the long-term temperature trend for Georgia is slowly dropping. The heat wave caused more than 30 all time temperature records to be tied or broken around the country, and more than 2,000 daily high temperature records were broken.

For precipitation, it was the 37th driest August on record, out of 113 years measured. Much of the southeast had below-normal rainfall, continuing the drought conditions we’ve had for the past year:

From looking at the map, it appears that Georgia had a relatively normal month, ranking 43rd dries, especially against the extremely dry conditions in the surrounding states. This is due to above normal rainfall in central and south-central Georgia, and normal rainfall in the southeast part of the state. The rest of the state saw below normal precipitation, with the northwest and northeast corners much below normal.