2008 Weather In Review
We’re at the end of 2008, and it’s time to take a look at some of the significant weather events affecting metro Atlanta, Georgia and the United States during the past year.
If there was one single event that could serve as a highlight to the Atlanta area, it would be the tornado that struck downtown on March 14th. The F2 tornado brought 120 MPH winds near the Georgia Dome, disrupting NCAA Basketball playoffs and causing significant damage to the dome, the World Congress Center and several other buildings. An additional ten tornadoes were reported on the following day in Georgia. Other significant Georgia tornadic activity occurred on February 17th and Mother’s Day, May 12th.
The 2008 hurricane season was also above average, with 16 named storms. The two most likely to be remembered are Tropical Storm Fay and Hurricane Ike. Fay is the only storm to make landfall in a single state (Florida) four times, bringing over two feet of rain to parts of the state. Fay was also the only storm to significantly affect the Atlanta area as her remnants finally moved northward on August 24th.
Hurricane Ike caused the most damage to the United States since Katrina in 2005. Although it was a category 2 storm when it made landfall near Galveston on September 13th, strong winds and a storm surge caused over $8 billion in damage. Combined with Hurricane Gustav two weeks earlier, the storms caused some significant disruption in Gulf oil production, leading to high prices and gasoline shortages in Georgia during late September.
Seemingly never-ending rain in the upper Midwest in June caused serious flood damage especially in Iowa, but also in Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana. 83 Iowa counties were declared disaster areas because of the flooding. Major parts of Iowa and Missouri had their wettest January-June since recordkeeping started.
it was a different story in the Southeast, however as drought conditions continued across much of Georgia and the Carolinas. In Atlanta, the year will end up having 8.63 fewer inches of rainfall than normal, while in Athens, they will end up 11.33 inches short of normal precipitation. Conditions were closer to normal further south, with both Columbus and Macon having more rain than normal for 2008. As the year draws to a close, none of Georgia has exceptional drought conditions, compared to over 16% a year ago, and 69% of the state is drought free, compared to 2% at the beginning of the year.
Overall, 2008 was a year of some extreme weather, from snow falling in New Orleans, Houston and Las Vegas to Atlanta’s having more January snow than New York City. Overall, 2008 will be the coldest for the United States since 1997. What does that mean for the theory of man made global warming? Deroy Murdock has some thoughts on this.
Have a happy and safe new year, and we’ll pick up on the weather (which looks like it may be colder and wetter to start) in 2009.
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