March has been wet, but the drought is still far from over
11Alive has posted an article featuring Dr. David Stooksbury, a state climatologist. He makes a few good points:
- March is the make or break month for the drought.
- We should receive about 1-1/4 inches of rain per week in March.
- Last March started out very wet, then turned dry.
- Recent rains haven’t helped the north Georgia river flows.
Based on his statement of 1-1/4 inches per week, that means we need to average about 0.17 inches per day (1.25 inches divided by 7 days in a week).
So far this month we’ve seen a total of 2.04 inches in nine days, or an average of about 0.23 inches/day, which is above average. Lake Lanier continues to slowly refill, but it needs to get going in a hurry and start gaining some more ground on the 16 foot deficit.
March 9th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
?What if we get rain later this summer from hurricane(s)/tropical storm(s)?Will that help at all?
March 9th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
That’s what we really, really need. Having a tropical storm sit over us and dump about 10 inches would do a LOT to help the lakes.
March 9th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
I read that climatologists are predicting a warm dry spring.Well,thats also what they predicted for winter,and they were wrong.The last week of Dec.07,Jan&Feb08 were mostly cold and quite wet.
March 9th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Unless I’m mistaken, January was above average temperature and below average precipitation (though it was really close on both).
Anyone have numbers handy for the last three months?
March 10th, 2008 at 5:24 am
Droughts don’t “end”, they taper off until you wake up one morning and realize your basement is flooded.
A tropical system dumping 10 inches of rain would cause potentially devastating flooding, that’s the last thing we need. A tropical storm dumping 3 or 4 inches, now that’s another story, we could use a couple of those.
Unless I’m mistaken, Lake Lanier should have dried up by now (but it hasn’t).
March 10th, 2008 at 6:53 am
Wednesday, October 31st, 2007
The question of “how many days worth of water do we have left?” never seems to have the same answer twice.
(snip)
So what’s the answer? It’s obviously very hard to say. My wild guess would be about 20 weeks (140 days), assuming a little bit of rain and no change in the Corps release levels. That puts us in mid-March. At that point, they could start using the dead pool and we’d see how things go from there.
March 10th, 2008 at 6:55 am
Water
Big deal
I hear the world is ending on December 12, 2012
March 10th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Today the Fox5 meteorologist stated that “even 2005 wasnt a stellar year for rain”…as I recall 2005 was the second year in a row of record flooding in GA during hurricanes Dennis and Rita.
March 10th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
…and @ C. Little the world will ‘end’(yeah right)on Dec.21,not Dec.12.;)
March 11th, 2008 at 10:27 am
SouthSideNative:
Not saying that I fully believe it, BUT I think the Mayans (on whose calendar this prediction is based) know a little something about collapsing civilizations…
March 11th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Very sorry to get off topic ,but people who stupidly misinterpret historical data they dont even understand(and who use multiple screen names)annoy me.The Mayan Long Count doesnt signify an ‘end of civilization/world’ but the end of a 25,000yr astrological cycle consisting of 5 smaller 5,000yr cycles.Winter Solstice 2012 is the end of the Fifth Sun cycle and the start of a new 25,000yr cycle,and the first time in 25,000yr that the sun is conjunct the Milky Way,forming a ‘Cosmic Cross’ and supposedly signifying a time of transformation,not an end.The date was left blank because its up to US to decide if the transformation is positive or negative.Now pick ONE screen name and stick to it,chicken!
March 11th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Oh, f… off…. the screen name change was a joke… like “I’m not a doctor but I play one on tv”. Maybe you’re too stupid to know what I was talking about. (btw, I’m not chicken little if that’s what you’re referring to there with your comment at the end)
I can read wikipedia too, ya know. I write 26 words and you know who I am and how I ’stupidly’ misinterpret historical data? Maybe you can enlighten me on the exact cause of the Mayan civilization collapse. And if this ‘cosmic cross’ changes our environment (solar flares, temperature changes, magnetic field changes, etc) then how is it in our power to make it positive or negative? How do you know they left the date blank? Sounds like a stupid misinterpretation of historical data to me. It ends with no explanation, not left blank or anything else. it just ends…
get a sense of humor. I thought you had one when you wrote funny things like this: ‘Anthropocene’?Has the Holocene ended already?
but I guess I was wrong…
March 11th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Do you know where the water is in plentiful supply, in Georgia? Away from metro Atlanta? And ‘they’ don’t ration it, or worry about it.
March 12th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
Dear god, that 11Alive “article” is horrendous… I hope this is the work of an intern and not a “professional” journalist.
-st