Drought Recedes as Winter Ends
While the vernal equinox isn’t for another three weeks, from a weatherman’s perspective, today is the first day of spring. And it looks like for the next two weeks or so, spring is going to be colder and wetter than normal, so take advantage of the nice weather this weekend while it lasts.
Beginning on Monday evening, another round of storms should hit much of the east coast, including Georgia. The latest hazards outlook is calling for a chance of severe thunderstorms Monday evening and Tuesday, and is also calling for some significant drought relief from the rain the storms will bring. Another front passing through later in the week could bring some rain, but it is more likely to introduce some cooler weather, with high temperatures next week at this time in the low 50s.
The 6-10 day outlook is calling for colder than normal temperatures, and greater than normal precipitation in north Georgia, while the 8-14 day outlook continues the cold trend and brings precipitation back to normal. For the month as a whole, the outlook is for warmer than normal temperatures, and normal rainfall.
For the month of February at Hartsfield Airport, Atlanta’s official observation station the total rainfall of 4.61 inches was just shy of normal, while the average temperature of 48.3 degrees was 1.6 above normal. Here in Lawrenceville, I was a little cooler, at 47.2 degrees for the average temp, and a little drier, with 4.24 inches of precipitation.
February’s rainfall caused most of the Atlanta metro area to fall back from the exceptional drought category, and back to just extreme drought. Measured through 7 AM Tuesday (which I’m not sure includes the effects of Tuesday mornings thunderstorms), only 6.1% of Georgia is in the throes of an exceptional drought, compared to 43% back in the beginning of December. Of course a year ago, only 3% of the state was in a moderate drought and 2/3 of the state was just exceptionally dry, so we have a way to go before we’re back to normal.
With winter ending, we can look back at some of the unusual events it brought, including more January snow in Atlanta than New York City, a once a century snowfall in Baghdad, Iraq and exceptional snow in China that almost brought that country to its knees. In Wisconsin, exceptional snowfall and record cold temperatures made for an unpleasant winter there. The cold weather has made some, including the Daily Tech, wonder if Global Warming is over and we are entering a period of global cooling.
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