For the first time since July, 2007, none of Georgia is experiencing exceptional drought conditions. The most recent Georgia drought monitor shows that 46% of the state is drought free, and that parts of southern Fulton, DeKalb and Gwinnett counties have improved to the severe drought category, a step up from the extreme drought conditions seen further north.

Including the 1.15 inches of rain that fell yesterday at the Atlanta airport, we are above normal for March precipitation, and only down 1.79 inches for the year.  Last year at this time, only 7.89 inches of rain had fallen in Atlanta, so we’re way ahead of last year.  Lake Lanier is responding as well, rising about a third of a foot from the rain yesterday.

The drought outlook continues to call for improvement in the parts of Alabama and Georgia that were hardest hit last year, and some improvement for  the remainder of North Georgia, South Carolina and North Caroliina.  This outlook parallels the latest monthly precipitation outlook for April:

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A few interesting weather notes tonight…

First of all, there is going to be a total eclipse of the moon tomorrow night, the only one until sometime in 2010. As you c an see from the chart below, the event begins shortly before 9PM, reaches totality somewhere around 10:30, and ends shortly after midnight on the 22nd.

Unfortunately, it looks like most folks in Georgia will not be able to view too much, since the forecast is for increasing cloudiness Wednesday evening, as the next storm system moves in. That’s too bad, since this is one that will be visible from beginning to end for much of the eastern part of the country. But, step outside tomorrow night if you have a chance, to see a rare event. You can find more at NASA’s Lunar Eclipse Page.

Georgians hoping for some relief from the drought shouldn’t mind missing the eclipse too much, since the oncoming clouds herald a very good chance for significant precipitation. The latest HPC numbers call for over an inch through Saturday morning, and more rain over the weekend. This is actually down a bit from their morning outlook, which predicted up to three inches of rain through Sunday morning. Accuweather is calling for 2 inches on Thursday or Friday. Any way you slice it, the additional rainfall combined with last Sunday’s rain will increase stream runoff, helping Lake Lanier refill.

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Wednesday night’s threatened winter storm didn’t end up causing too much difficulty for the metro Atlanta area. The onset of snow between 5 and 5:30 PM managed to put about a quarter inch of the white stuff on my yard and caused the temperature to drop below freezing, but by 7:30 PM, temperatures rose above 32 degrees, and stayed constant or warmed up as the overnight hours passed.

Nonetheless, at least some freezing rain was noticed in parts of Gwinnett, even if it was in limited areas. I noticed that ice was still sticking to trees after noon today along Wisteria Drive in Snellville, and the pine trees along Ronald Reagan Parkway were similarly burdened. So much of what happens in a winter storm is temperature dependent, so just a variation of a degree or so can make a big difference.

The continually varying weather we’ve seen this winter has brought relatively normal precipitation to drought-starved North Georgia. December ended up with more than the normal amount of rainfall, and the official rain gauge in Atlanta is close to what we would expect so far in a normal January.

The latest drought outlook, released today and shown at right, calls for improving conditions for much of the northern part of the state including Atlanta, with at least some relief for the rest of the state. We should see another chance of rain and/or snow Friday night and Saturday morning, with more precipitation for the latter part of next week.  Both the 6-10 and 8-14 long range outlooks call a better than average chance of rainfall.

We’re not out of the drought yet.  But, with drier than normal conditions predicted for the winter due to the presence of La Nina, it can’t be a bad thing that precipitation is running close to normal.

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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March is likely to live up to the traditional saying, ‘In like a lion, out like a lamb’. From a temperature perspective, the month ended up about half a degree cooler than normal, on average. Atlanta’s normal mean temperature through March 29th is 54 degrees, while down at the Airport, the actual mean was 53.5, and here in Lawrenceville, 53.4 degrees through this evening. The means don’t tell the whole story, however. Despite breaking 80 degrees on the 11th and 12th, a cool period between the 20th and the 28th brought the month’s only freezing temperatures, with a low of 27.8 degrees recorded on the 27th.

A bit more worrisome is the precipitation trend. The image to the right shows the percentage of normal rainfall for 2006 year to date in Georgia. Most of the Atlanta metro area has had between 60 and 90% of normal rainfall, an the situation is worse for the rest of the state. I’ve recorded only 2.72 inches of rain here, while Atlanta’s normal for March is 5.3 inches. Even if we get an expected half inch of rain Friday night, it’s still only half of normal.

Our weather this spring is being influenced by a weak La Nina — the condition where sea surface temperatures in the Pacific are lower than average. This tends to cause warm winter conditions and dryer than usual weather in the Southeast US.

Right now, the forecast is for normal than usual temperatures and less precipitation than normal, at least for the next two weeks. The three month outlook from April through June pretty much calls for the same thing.