Here in New England, we’ve started to have “twin peaks” in our electrical demand. Summer air-conditioning demand during heat waves used to be our greatest daily demand. But recently, during the latter end of sustained cold outbreaks, the overnight period has been our highest peak demands…presumably because the longer the deep cold lasts, the more people turn-on their electric space heaters in one or two rooms to help drive some of the chill out. In northern VT (my stomping grounds) it would have to be in the neighborhood of -35 below for many consecutive nights before people will turn to electric space heaters.

I mention this because I don’t know how much of Georgia uses electricity to provide heat during cold snaps, and more so, how much generation capacity exists to meet a sharp (temporary) rise in demand.

As an aside, Vermont is just emerging from yet another moderate-heavy snowfall, the snowbanks everywhere tower over roads and driveways, and space to plow/shovel/push the snow is coming at an increasing premium…an old fashioned winter. But we’re also having our first real punch of cold, with today’s high temperatures of 5 degrees this morning falling all day on hard, gusty, wind with lots of snow drifting. The cold parts of the state will see -25 below tonight, and likely at least -20 below here at my house. The wood stove will be pressed into overtime service tonight.

The rain god might not listen to Sonny, but he might listen to a little chicken. Read the story here:
http://www.wateryear2003.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=6334&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

Does anyone think Sonny will pray for a hurricane to sit over Atlanta and dump 8″ of rain?

Dear Lord,
Please send a hurricane to drop enough rain to flood people in low lying areas.
Love,
Sonny

Actually the figure of 500 MGal / day is an approximation of the total water use from the Atlanta metro area that draws water from the ACF basin. It’s more than the city of Atlanta uses, but less than the entire metro area uses because a good part of the metro area isn’t drawing from the ACF basin. The more pertinent answer to beachmom is 150-200 MGal / day of consumption which takes into account the water that is returned to the system. Again, that figure is for the entire metro area that draws from ACF.

And in answer to beachmom’s original question - the amount used here vs. the amount sent downstream varies greatly because the release amounts vary greatly. If you look just at the time period that Lanier was dropping like a rock this year June - Nov, the average outflow from Lanier was 1718 CFS which equates to 2655 MGal / day. So if you figure 175 MGal/day for Atlanta metro consumption, then for every gallon consumed here during that period, approximately 14 gallons went downstream. I hope that helps paint a clearer picture of what was causing the lake to fall so quickly.