Northeast Georgia in Moderate Drought, Says State Climatologist

Northeast Georgia is in a moderate drought…

That’s according to Georgia State Climatologist Bill Murphey.

Summer started, officially, Monday night, but even before that, our area was experiencing higher-than-normal temperatures and lower-than-normal rainfall.

Murphey says at least for the start of summer, hot and dry conditions are going to continue with no real rainfall relief in sight.

Murphey says Franklin and Hart Counties are two of the driest counties in North Georgia so far this season.

“For the past 90 days, you’re about six to eight inches below normal,” Murphey said. “If you just look at some other individual stations there, like Hartwell, they’re actually ranked 10th driest on record at 14.08 inches, if you do year-to-date precip since January 1. That’s the driest since 2006.”

He said Elberton’s prediction center shows they are down about two inches so far and over the past three months, the entire Northeast Georgia area is about five inches below normal.

“The past three months, negative 5.96 inches less than normal, which actually puts your area at first driest for that period of time,” he said. “Normal is about 10.76 inches. So again, minus 5.9 inches less than normal. So, you’ve only observed 4.8 inches of precip in that area,” he said.

Murphey said currently the Climate Prediction Center from the National Weather Service indicates the precipitation outlook for the rest of the summer is still uncertain.

Still, he says the likelihood is more for above normal temperatures.

Some good news, however, is that we could begin to see some wet weather before too long.

“If you check the three-month outlook, we’re looking at a greater probability of above normal tempertures which matches the pattern we’re going in,” Murphey said. “The only slightly good news is it looks like early July the pattern might get just a little bit wetter. So, hopefully that will help bring I more precip into the State.”

According to Murphy, by late summer, early fall, we should begin to move into a La Nina pattern, which he says could bring more hurricane and tropical storm activity in the Atlantic Basin and Gulf.

“During a La Nina event, you actually have a better potential for development in the Atlantic Basin because of less shear,” he said. “So, I would anticipate that we would get more tropical activity that we had last year in the Atlantic Basin. That will be something to keep an eye as we get closer to tropical season, which is late summer, early fall.”