The Atlanta Journal-Constitution today ended its Christmas editorial with a wish that it would just precipitate. 2007 had the possibility of going into the record books as the driest year on record, which is currently held by the year 1931, with 29.14 inches of total rainfall. As of this morning, Atlanta saw 28.69 inches of rain, and today Hartsfield-Jackson airport recorded 58 inches of rain. bringing the total to 29.27 inches. Most of today’s rain stayed to the western half of the state, so Gwinnett county recorded much less, but it’s Hartsfield that counts.

But, the situation could get even better. The most current precipitation forecast from NOAA’s Hydrometeorological Prediction Center calls for between three and four inches of rain in North Georgia between now and Sunday night, December 30th. You can see their predictions in the map to the right.

Accuweather.com says that we should get more than 3.1 inches of rain in the next five days. Of course, we’ve seen these precipitation forecasts become busts more often than we’d like. Despite many optimistic forecasts, you would have to go back to November 2006 to see more than 2 1/2 inches of rain in a five day period, and back to July, 2005 to see 3 1/2 inches of rain in five days.

But, it’s the holiday season; a time of goodwill and wishes coming true. Like the AJC, I wish for rainfall, and hope that you and yours enjoyed the best Christmas ever.

With the weather in Georgia staying dry, and seemingly no end to the weather pattern that we’re in, there hasn’t been a lot of weather news to talk about. In fact, for most of the country, it’s been dry. But that’s not the case elsewhere.

In Mexico, 1 million people have been displaced, and there has been over $700 million dollars in damage due to flooding in the state of Tabasco. Some are calling the situation as bad as Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Meanwhile, in England, massive storms in the North Sea are expected to cause severe flooding and a tidal wave on the east coast of Britain. Officials there have closed a barrier at the mouth of the Thames river to prevent inland flooding.

Closer to home, most of North Georgia got its first freeze of the season last night. Temperatures here in Lawrenceville dropped to 28.5 on my thermometer early this morning. In Summerville it got down to 21 degrees, which appears to be the low for the state so far, followed closely by Peachtree City, which reported 22 degrees. Due to the city heat island, it only reached 32 degrees at Atlanta Hartsfield.

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It’s been four weeks since the Georgia Environmental Protection Division declared level 4 watering restrictions in the northern third of the state. By now, I think everyone has realized that we’re truly in a drought situation, and counties and other water providers are struggling to figure out how to reduce consumption by 10% below traditionally low winter water usage.

At the state and federal level, officials are playing the blame game. Sonny Perdue is blaming the mussels in Florida; the Alabama and Florida Governors are making the case that they are legitimate water users, and even South Georgia is getting into the act, with the Valdosta Times saying,

“The wasteful ways of Atlantans continued through the past decade of severe drought in the state. The water restrictions meant little to them “up there” as they had plenty of water at the time, while rural Georgia and farmers were watching their crops burn in their fields, listening as Atlanta politicians who apparently do think their food originates in a grocery store passed policies designed to prevent them from accessing the water literally beneath their feet.”

I was reminded of an op-ed page that appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in July of 2006 by a photographer who went to Apalachicola Bay with a group of water experts to take pictures of the situation. The article, entitled “Lanier Not a Water Culprit” is no longer available online, so I went to the library to look it up on microfilm. Here are some of the key points the article made:

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110 Degree Summer Temperatures in 2080?

You may have read the banner headline at the top of Thursday’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution — NASA Predicts Scorcher for Atlanta. The article focused on the potential for daily high summer temperatures of 110 degrees in Georgia by 2080, 15 to 20 degrees above what we typically see now. The article was based on a press release from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, which in turn was based on a peer reviewed article that appeared in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate. I tried to read the original article, which unfortunately is only available to subscribers, but was able to locate the article’s abstract.

The interesting thing to me is that the focus of the research seemed to be the effects of colder sea surface temperatures on precipitation probabilities in the eastern US. While the abstract says nothing about carbon dioxide levels or global warming, it appears that the bottom line is that if CO2 levels continue to increase by 2% per year, and you get a summer with extreme low eastern Pacific sea surface temperatures, which would result in fewer storms in the eastern US, then daytime temperatures could range between 100 and 110 in cities like Atlanta.

Kirk Melhuish Weighs In on Global Warming

WSB Radio meteorologist Kirk Melhuish released a position paper this week that reflects his observations on global warming. The four page missive is well worth a read, both for his opinions on the subject, and for his command of English literature. He cautions readers to be wary of the extremists on both sides of the global warming debate, but acknowledges that there does appear to be strong evidence of some human-caused effects in the rise of temperatures.

He questions our current ability to correctly model Earth’s climate such that we can make accurate predictions about what the climate will be like 100 years from now, and thinks that it may take another 20 years before the competing scientific theories are analyzed properly to determine whether what is being predicted now is correct.

AccuWeather Releases 2007 Hurricane Projections

Hurricane expert Joe Bastardi and the weather forecasters at AccuWeather put out a press release this week with their predictions for the 2007 hurricane season. They forecast between 13 and 14 named storms, and 3 intense hurricanes category 3 or higher. While still a season with greater than normal hurricane activity, they are predicting fewer storms than Dr. Gray at Colorado State University, who is calling for 17 named storms, and 5 intense hurricanes.

AccuWeather thinks that the area most likely to be hit by hurricanes this year is the Gulf Coast, with the most danger from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, through Florida, and west to the mouth of the Mississippi.

If the predictions hold true, it will be bad news for an area that got clobbered in 2004 and 2005. However, it could mean an end to the drought that is affecting Georgia, since there is a good likelihood that storms in the eastern Gulf end up bringing rain to Georgia. Dr. Gray will update his forecast one more time, just before the tropical season officially starts on June first.