I received a nice note from a blog reader in northeast Cobb county reporting that they got quite a bit of rain over the last week. He estimated that about ten inches had fallen where he lives. Well, 10 inches would be quite a lot of rainfall — more like what we would see as the result of tropical weather, and looking at some of the estimated precipitation data from the weather service, they don’t have anything like that reported. That being said, it looks like Marietta did have the highest amount of rainfall over the last week.

From July 7th through yesterday, here are the rainfall totals for some metro Atlanta locations:
Athens: 2.79 inches
Atlanta: 3.91 inches
Gainesville: 1.92 inches
Marietta: 4.18 inches
Chamblee (Peachtree DeKalb): 2 inches
West Atlanta (Charlie Brown): 1.83 inches

For the month of July so far, here are some totals:
Athens: 3.31 inches
Atlanta: 4.82 inches
Allatoona Dam: 6.07 inches
Alpharetta: 3.1 inches
Ball Ground: 5.55 inches
Carrollton: 1.52 inches
Gainesville: 1.92 inches
Helen: 4.45 Inches

Here in Lawrenceville, I’ve recorded 2.03 inches for July to date. So, it’s fair to assume that locations in the northwest got more rain than did those on the east or south of Atlanta. July is typically the rainiest month on average for Atlanta, with 5.12 inches in a typical year. However, the capriciousness of thunderstorms means that rainfall amounts can vary widely, even over a relatively small area.

We probably won’t have to worry too much about rain for the next few days. Behind the cold front that pushed through last night is much drier air, and you’ll see low humidity and dew points for the next few days. That also means cooler evening temperatures, and no weather problems for the primary election on Tuesday.

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.

The first tropical storm that could pose a threat to the United States got a name yesterday, and her name is Bertha. With wind speeds of 50 MPH, she is moving north-northwest at about 18 MPH. While still located about 500 miles west of the Cape Verde islands, she is expected to approach the US sometime next week:

Bertha’s exact track will be determined by a high pressure ridge in the mid-Atlantic. While there is a possibility that the storm will curve north and miss the US coastline, there’s also the possibility that the storm could act more like Hurricane Bertha did back in 1996. That storm, also in July, passed over the Virgin Islands, and eventually made landfall in North Carolina, causing about $400 million worth of damage (in 2008 dollars).

While the first Bertha didn’t bring much rain to Georgia, depending on what the current one does, we could see some drought relief…or not. Stay tuned.

In this morning’s Wall Street Journal, columnist Bret Stephens writes about global warming, and the fact that since it was first discovered 20 years ago, much of what was said has been discredited.

Recent evidence of a cooling pattern, including cooler sea surface temperatures, expanding Antarctic sea ice and colder North American winters has caused some global warming advocates to postulate that we are in a temporary break from the warming, and that it will resume after 2020. But, as Stephens notes,

If even slight global cooling remains evidence of global warming, what isn’t evidence of global warming? What we have here is a nonfalsifiable hypothesis, logically indistinguishable from claims for the existence of God. This doesn’t mean God doesn’t exist, or that global warming isn’t happening. It does mean it isn’t science.

Stephens then goes on to discuss several theories as to why the AGW crowd continues to believe as it does. Well worth a read.

This morning’s low of 62 degrees in Atlanta (and 58 degrees in my more suburban location here in Lawrenceville) was one of the lowest seen for a July morning in quite a while. It looks like the last time Atlanta saw a temperature that low in July was back on July 12, 1999. It was the lowest July reading I’ve recorded since I got my weather station back in 2002.

Tomorrow looks like a possible record breaker, especially in Macon, where the record low is 58 degrees, set in 1937, and a low of 56 is predicted. For Atlanta, there’s still a possibility, although the low record of 58 degrees is still three degrees above 1961’s record low for July 2. Enjoy it while you can, because more typical July weather comes back just in time for the Independence Day weekend.

Meanwhile the first real sign of possible tropical activity in the Atlantic basin is being tracked by the National Hurricane Center. There’s a low pressure system off the coast of Africa that is moving west, and may gain strength over the next few days. In the Pacific basin, Tropical Storm Boris continues its westerly track into nowhere, and is not likely to bother anything before it dies out this weekend.