The latest from the US Drought Monitor is out, and the drought continues to gradually worsen across much of the state. We’ve not seen a ton of change across far Northeast Georgia, but just a bit further south the D1 area of moderate drought is quickly expanding in our direction.
Much of South Hall, Forsyth, Banks and all of Jackson Counties are now in a D1, or moderate drought. Since last week’s update, no rain has fallen across the majority of the state. Some spots in Northwest Georgia did see some showers last Thursday, but since then the only rain has been along the coast. The image below shows the past 7 days of rainfall. Note the extremely high totals over central South Carolina where the drought was erased in that region.
Overall, the total area of Georgia in a drought did decrease by about 1%, but all categories from D1-D3 saw expansions. Far southwest Georgia is in by far the worst shape with widespread extreme drought. Below you can see what percentage of normal rain has fallen in both the past 30 and 60 days. While there are some areas that have seen normal rainfall, they are extremely spotty and in many cases completely surrounded by spots that didn’t. The nature of afternoon storms in late summer without any tropical input lends itself to this type of situation.
As far as rainfall deficits go, those are also quite spotty. The area right along the I-85/985 corridor and up 441 currently have the biggest departures, around 3-5″ in the past 60 days depending on exact location.
Unfortunately, it appears we will continue to remain mostly dry for the next 7-10 days. A cold front will bring some showers to the region on Sunday, but currently those are expected to be quite light with 1/2″ or less for most of us. Weather models are still a bit split, with the Euro bringing higher totals, but in general the front does not look overly impressive.
Outside of this front, no more rain is expected in the next 10 days. Worsening drought conditions are likely to continue through the end of the month. There are some signs of a more active storm pattern moving in by late month, but that is still 10+ days away so not worth hanging your hat on just yet.
