Atlanta Water Shortage

There were 25 straight dry days in a row, which caused Lake Lanier to drop by over 1.5 feet, but the last few days have brought some very nice rain totals to the area.  The 25 day stretch was the 21st longest dry period since 1878 — pretty impressive!

According to Ken Cook, here are some area totals from the storm:

• Athens…3.16″
• Atlanta….1.80″
• Cartersville…1.43″
• Columbus…3.03″
• Gainesville…1.64″
• Macon…1.44″
• Marietta…2.51″
• Peachtree-Dekalb…2.04″
• Peachreee City…1.96″
• Rome…1.85″
• Fulton Co. airport…1.94″

The big question everyone is asking: Did Fay “fix” the drought? In a word, no, but it helped.

With the rain essentially gone, the total at Buford Dam over the last few days is presumed to have been about five inches.  The USGS totals only show about 4 inches, but they seem to be having some problems with their system.  Hopefully they can get that fixed.

In terms of the lake, the water has risen nearly 17 inches, from a low of 1053.30′ on Sunday (and Monday) morning, up to a high around 1054.69′ right now.  That was the level back on August 7, so this storm bought us nearly three weeks.

However, this rainfall will benefit Lake Lanier for weeks to come.  The biggest problem facing the lake is the amount of water drained from the lake each day.  Recently, around a billion gallons per day was being released, but that was reduced by nearly 40% on Monday, and will likely be reduced for some time to come because of the excess water downstream.

Next up is Gustav. It’s expected to strengthen into a strong storm (possibly a Category 3 hurricane), but no one has any idea where it might make landfall.  Whether we see any rain from it or not is completely up in the air.  We’ll keep you posted as the storm gets closer.

For the last few days, most storm models have been showing Fay either missing us completely or just giving us a few bands of rain.  However, now we’re starting to see some models that show the potential for some substantial rain.

The photo at right shows the potential rainfall for the six hour period starting at 2pm Saturday.  Based on that, we could see 3-4 inches in that timeframe, plus some rain before/after the six hour window.

The next few days should start clearing it up either way.

(via Lawrenceville Weather Blog)

It’s August, so it’s time to welcome back the scorching temperatures.  The Lawrenceville Weather Blog is reporting that today was unofficially the hottest day of the year so far.  Last August was brutally hot across Georgia, resulting in a significant drop in Lake Lanier’s water level.  It’s unlikely that this year will be quite that hot, as it was the one of the hottest Augusts since 1980.

Despite the cooler temperatures, we could still see another large drop in Lanier’s level.  As rkolter pointed out, last year we had a ton of restrictions and people were very water-conscious.  This year there are fewer restrictions in place and water is rarely in the news.

Last August saw a drop of 2.37 feet (1064.14 to 1061.77).  Do you think August will see a greater drop, a lesser drop, or no drop at all?

As seen in Ken Cook’s blog, July was the rainiest month we’ve had in nearly two years, with a total of 7.17″ at the Atlanta airport, which is 2.05″ above average.  It also cuts our rainfall deficit for the year to just five inches, compared to the 14 inch deficit we were facing at this point last year.

The bad news is that Lanier continues to drop.  It went from 1056.23′ on July 1 to 1055.15′ on August 1, or a drop of just over a foot. Last year on August 1 we were at 1064.14′, so we’re quite a bit behind that.

Last August is when the lake really began to drop, losing nearly 2.5 feet in August, and over three feet in both September and October.  The record low is 1050.79, set on December 26 last year.  If we see similar drops in the next few months, we’ll blow past that record.

This month should be very telling…

The Lawrenceville Weather Blog has a nice look at the current state of the drought.  From their site:

And, indeed the latest drought monitor for Georgia shows an area of extreme drought in the northeast corner of the state enlarging to the west, including portions of Gwinnett county, and virtually all of the Lake Lanier drainage basin. As of Tuesday, 8.9% of Georgia was in extreme drought, compared to 2.3% last week. 61% of the state is classified as being in a moderate drought. However, as the comparison below shows, we’re still better off than we were at this time last year. On June 12, 2007, 47% of Georgia was in extreme drought and 96.1% was in at least a moderate drought.

Hopefully we’ll get some lucky downpours over the next few weeks to help prop us up, then a slow moving tropical storm later this summer.  We can dream, can’t we?

(so sad, having to dream about tropical storms…)