Whew! Finally a moment to take a breath after a crazy two days of rain and storms. A survey team from the National Weather Service is in Jackson, Hall and Banks county assessing the damage from yesterday's storms. They will determine if it was a tornado that caused all of the damage. If it was a tornado, they will classify if it was a F0, F1 or F2 storm based on the Fujita Scale. We're glad the storms are gone today!
Don't get me wrong...I LOVED watching all of that rain come down. Many areas of metro Atlanta picked up between 3 and 6 inches of rain on average. Other spots to the north picked up 5-10 inches. Habersham County got close to a foot of rain. That rain is helping to fill our creeks, streams, and lakes. Lake Lanier's level has gone up almost 2 feet in the past couple of days! Here are some encouraging numbers from our area lakes.
Lanier Full Pool 1071'. Current Level 1053.37' Up 1.52' in 24 hours
Allatoona Full Pool 840' Current Level 836.90' Up 1.33 in 24 Hours
Hartwell Full Pool 660' Current Level 646.25 Up .64 in 24 hours
These levels may rise more since all of the run off from the storms will still make its way to the lakes!
Now, we shift our attention to our next potential tropical trouble. Gustav is brewing in the Caribbean. It weakened as it made landfall over Haiti and is now a tropical storm. However, it will intensify as it moves back over water. This storm is projected to become a major hurricane as it moves into the Gulf of Mexico this weekend. We will have to watch the storm very closely. It is still too early to tell if it will have any effect on our weather at all. Here's a look at the forecast track. While looking at the track, keep in mind that the storm may go more to the west or east of the line. Everyone along the Gulf coast needs to keep a close eye on Gustav.
Here's a look at the "spaghetti model." This map overlays all of the models to see all of the variations of each forecast:
As of late Tuesday evening, Lake Lanier has seen almost a foot-and-a-half rise since the start of the rain. The stream flow conditions were registering as high as they've been in a long time at the gauges on the Chattahoochee up near the headwaters by Cornelia. The same was noted on the Chestatee near Dahlonega as well. This means that instead of a 1ft. rise in the lake, a rise of at least 2 feet is likely going to occur. Yesterday, I thought the rise would only be a foot or perhaps a little above that.
Rainfall totals around Lake Lanier were very impressive. Lumpkin county around Dahlonega measured over 10 inches of rain ( 10.29" ) at a monitoring station there. Gainesville had anywheres from 5-7 inches fall, depending on the monitoring sites checked in that area. Much of Forsyth county saw 4-5 inches of rain. The highest rain total we found was in Habersham county. The Chattooga ranger station north of Cornelia recored 12.75 inches of rain since Sunday evening. Rainfall totals north of Atlanta generally averaged 4-7 inches, with higher amounts such as noted above in several areas.
Atlanta itself measured just under two inches at the airport, but many places within the city limits received 2-3 inches all together. The Athens area had 2-3 inches on average as well.
Areas south of town were also in the 2-3 inch range. Jonesboro checked in with 2.68" of rain overall and Peachtree City had slightly more than 3 inches since Sunday. Out west towards Cartersville, Rome, and Carrollton, amounts were closer to 4 inches overall.
I e-mailed David Stookesbury, the state climatologist over at UGA today to ask him when he would be assessing all the rain data and it's impact on the drought. He said he'd let everything settle for a few days and then go over the numbers to determine just how much improvement to the drought was gained. We do know that the heaviest rain fell in the driest area, that being the northeastern corner of the state. We also know that the entire state received beneficial rainfall from the tropical system and that we should know in a few days the exact impact the rain had on the drought.
The remnants of Fay brought locally heavy rain to portions of North Georgia the past 24 hours. We had one reporting station north of Cornelia in Habersham county measure 8.51 inches of rain in a little more than 24 hours time. That area is also home to where the Chattahoochee river begins. Stream flows from that area were much higher today than they've been in a while, meaning that the water flow into Lake Lanier will be on the increase the next few days. In the area in and around Dahlonega, near the Chestatee River, over 4 inches of rain had fallen in the past 24 hours. This also means additional water flowing down towards Lanier. More rain is very likely in these areas through the day Tuesday and into Wednesday as the remains of Fay track slowly northeastward through central and northern Alabama and up into eastern Tennessee.
What this means is a reverse in the trend of Lake Lanier falling, at least for the time being. A rise in the lake has started, albeit slowly. Rain totals over the Lanier watershed area are projected to be in the 5-9 inch range by the time the rain tapers off as we work through the day Wednesday. However, even with this substantial rainfall, the lake won't be filling up from it. The overall rise will probably be around a foot, or perhaps slightly more. That will still leave it well below normal. This same amount of rain in the wintertime would have meant about a 2 foot rise or higher. Summer demands, higher evaporation, and overall water use this time of year make the process of bringing the lake up much more difficult than during the winter season. Still, the benefits from this rain will indeed be quite helpful. Lakes to our south have received rainfall amounts of 5-10 inches the past 5 to 7 days and consequently won't be needing much water from Lanier for at least a couple of weeks or more. Also, the ground water around much of the region will get a decent recharging from this rain. Again, this means less demand will be put on Lake Lanier for water use, as groundwater supplies will be up quite a bit from earlier this summer.
The net result from all of this is that we'll still be classified in a drought status, but with decent improvement. Perhaps moving back into the category of moderate drought instead of severe drought. We'll know better after the rain has tapered off and we can look at the final rainfall tallies and determine where the heaviest totals fell. This will all figure into the recalculation of the drought situation. The lake will still likely be down quite a bit, but ground water and stream flows should improve noticably.
Still tracking heavy rain moving into the metro area. The tornado watch was extended to include metro Atlanta. Here's an updated list of counties in the watch.
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HAS EXTENDED TORNADO WATCH 863 TO INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING AREAS UNTIL 4 PM EDT THIS AFTERNOON
IN GEORGIA THIS WATCH INCLUDES 22 COUNTIES
IN NORTH CENTRAL GEORGIA
CHEROKEE CLAYTON COBB DEKALB DOUGLAS FAYETTE FULTON HENRY
IN NORTHWEST GEORGIA
BARTOW CHATTOOGA FLOYD PAULDING POLK
IN WEST CENTRAL GEORGIA
COWETA LAMAR MACON PIKE SCHLEY SPALDING SUMTER TAYLOR UPSON
THIS INCLUDES THE CITIES OF...AMERICUS...ATLANTA...BARNESVILLE... BUTLER...CARTERSVILLE...CEDARTOWN...DALLAS...DECATUR... DOUGLASVILLE...ELLAVILLE...GRIFFIN...MARIETTA...MONTEZUMA... NEWNAN...PEACHTREE CITY...RIVERDALE...ROME...STOCKBRIDGE... SUMMERVILLE...THOMASTON...WOODSTOCK AND ZEBULON.\
The watch is in effect until 4pm.
8/25/08-Monday 10am
It will be an active weather day. We are watching all of the bands of rain rotating around what is left of Fay. The center of the storm is located in southern Mississippi. The flow around this is picking up plenty of gulf moisture and sending it to us. We had some heavy rain in north Georgia this morning that dumping 3 to 5 inches of rain in Habersham County earlier.
Couple of things to watch...heavy rain and the potential for severe weather. First, the severe weather threat is mainly in west Georgia. Here's a link to the tornado watch that is in effect along the Georgia/Alabama border until 4pm.
The storm prediction center has extended the "slight" risk to include the Metro area. Here's a map of the slight severe risk:
The storms should weaken a bit as they move to the north and east. However, they will still produce a lot of rain. We could see on average 1 to 2 inches of rain today. More rain moves in tomorrow. As this all ends on Wednesday, we could have storm totals of 3 to 6 inches. There is a flash flood watch that will go into effect at 4pm today and last until tomorrow. This watch includes metro Atlanta and north and west Georgia.
While Fay never made it to famous hurricane status, the system as a tropical storm when everything is said and done could end up being one of the Southeast's biggest rain-makers over a widespread region. Fay is a good example of a storm that while not noteworthy for it's high winds, the rainfall content of the storm has indeed been impressive.
Let's premise all of this with the following. Tropical storms contain much more moisture than your average weather system. That's because they form over water and as they continue to develop over water, they gain more and more moisture as they evolve. Consequently, they are capable of producing much heavier rainfall than other kinds of weather systems. ( Low pressure areas, fronts, etc. ) Rainfall amounts for Fay over portions of Florida's east coast were over 20 inches, due to the slow movement of the storm. Even in South Georgia, rainfall has been very heavy thanks to the rich, tropical moisture flow into that portion of the state. Cairo in Grady county picked up over 10 inches of rain yesterday ( Saturday ) and have had about 15 inches for the past week. Camilla in Mitchell county has picked up about 10 inches of rain this past week. North Georgia has obviously not gotten in on this kind of rainfall, being farther away from the storm and also because of it's track due westawrd into southern Alabama.
As we head into the next couple of days, southern Mississippi and eastern Louisiana, could also experience locally heavy rainfall l between today and tomorrow as Fay moves into those areas.
After that, then the potential for heavier rain may shift eastward again into Alabama and perhaps Georgia too, including North Georgia. Due to the fact that tropical systems don't behave the same way as general weather systems, computer model have a much more difficult time trying to get a handle on their projected tracks. In the case of Fay, some projections do indeed take the system back towards this area for the period Tuesday and Wednesday of this week and maybe even lingering around into Thursday. This would potentially bring some of that heavy, tropical rain to areas like Lake Lanier and the rest of North Georgia. On the other hand, there are other projections by the computer models that hold the syatem back over Louisiana and Mississippi. That in turn would mean the heavier rain fall would stay away, at least on a widespread basis. Regardless. there still would likely be showers scattered over the local area this week simply because the airmass flowing into the state would remain tropical and thus provide at least some shower activity.
So our dilemma with Fay or the remnants of the system remain a challenging question to answer for meteorologists over the course of the next several days. However, one thing is certain. The rainfall amounts from Fay across the Southeast and Gulf Coast, which includes ( or will include ) parts of Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and possibly the Carolinas will end up ranking high on the list of big rain-making tropical storms that have hit the U.S.
