Another Blast of Cold for Next Week; and a Watering/Drought Update
Temperatures over the last few days have been 10 to 15 degrees above normal for this time of year. In the ‘typical’ early March, we’d be seeing a high of 63 and a low of 42. Things are about to switch around closer to normal, and then below normal for next week.
High pressure centered over south Georgia has provided the warm temperatures, and has blocked the colder temperatures and storms to the north from moving south. As the high pressure weakens on Wednesday, a cold front will sweep through, and by Thursday, temperatures will be noticeably cooler. By the weekend, wedging sets up, which will bring cloudy, cool damp weather to Atlanta and North Georgia.
All of this may clear out with a cold front coming through on Sunday, and after that, one more round of cold weather, with temperatures dropping below freezing after St. Patrick’s Day. It’s too early to know how cold it will get, but I hope you took my advice from last week to not put out any annuals. Both the 6-10 and 8-14 day forecasts call for colder than normal temperatures for much of the eastern US, and wetter than normal conditions for the southeast, especially early in the period.
Will next week’s cold weather be the last blast of Winter? In 2008, the last below freezing night was on March 25th, but in 2007, a late freeze in early April ruined the spring flower show.
Drought Update
Last week, the Georgia EPD announced that drought watering restrictions had been further reduced. Homeowners and businesses will now be allowed to use soaker hoses or drip irrigation three days per week for one hour per day, following the customary odd-even, midnight to 10 AM schedule previously used for hand watering. Hand watering will continue to be allowed for 25 minutes per day on the odd-even schedule.
The state’s intent here is to provide a means for homeowners to water shrubs and trees, rather than lawns. In face, lawns are specifically excluded from the EPD’s order (PDF). The interesting thing is that there’s no limit to the amount of soaker hose or drip irrigation that can be used – only a limit on the number of hours the system can run. The recommendation is that each soaker hose should be no more than 100 feet long, but by investing in a few of them, and possibly some faucet Ys, even someone with lots of landscape plants should be able to better this year than last.
Sphere: Related Content
