The weather here on the mountain has been very pleasant for the last couple of weeks. It has been sunny, warm during the day, cool at night, and dry. Mostly dry. This part of northwest Georgia is in “exceptional drought” according to the US drought monitor. Here’s the map, followed by the scale.
Floyd County is roughly in the middle of the region; it’s the county that looks like of like a fist giving a thumbs up. Based on the official airport record, we have had exceptionally little rain on the mountain from July through October 26. This July was the seventh driest on record at 1.45 inches, far below the average of 4.71 inches. September was the driest on record; the airport recorded 0.24 official inches in September, although I don’t believe we had that up here. October at 0.01 inches so far is third behind 1963 and 1938, which had no rain in October; not much real difference there. I’ll come back to August.
Based on the precipitation record, we are on track to have the fourth driest four-month period since 1900. The only reason it’s not the driest period on record is that the airport recorded a huge amount of rain in August (6.42 inches) which we did not have up here on the mountain.
All the houses on the mountain rely on wells for water. So far we have not had any obvious problems with ours. However, when I took the dogs out to the street for a restroom break, some neighbors from up the street stopped on their way down to visit a friend and fill a large water tank on their trailer. They said that they had had a 400-gallon water tank installed in their basement for backup. In fairness, I think some other neighbors told us that those neighbors had been having well problems earlier, so their current problem may not be entirely due to the drought.
On Tuesday there was a 160-acre wildfire on the other side of town from us. Other fires in the vicinity have been even larger. That might not sound like a large wildfire compared to those in the western US, but they are large for this area.
We have given up on the idea of planting anything in the yard until next spring; we simply cannot risk using well water to keep plants alive and maybe not having enough water for household use.
There is essentially no rain in the near-term forecast. The next few months are expected to be warmer and drier than normal. In addition to exceptionally little rain this summer, we have also had exceptionally hot weather. I expect to see a larger-than-normal number of trees dying in the next year or two as a result of the drought stress from this summer.
Wow, Mark, this does not sound good at all. As I am typing this we are having a nice steady rain. We’ve gotten 3X the normal amount of rain for this time of the year, so far. And our rainy season only just started on October 1. It worries me that the future rainfall prediction does not sound good there. I worry about the trees and the water supply. Yikes. On an entirely different note, I was amazed by your county map. I had to google Georgia counties just to see how many you have there. Wow! 159 counties. We only have 58 here in California.
Robin — The Atlanta TV weatherman said that the Atlanta area matched a record for 2016 — the number of days with temperatures over 80F. The forecast for the next few days in Atlanta is for highs in the 80s, so Atlanta will break that record. Rome is usually at least as hot as Atlanta. Fortunately, up on the mountain we don’t get quite as warm as the official high.
The number of counties in Georgia is ridiculous. Even so, county commissioners in some “large” Georgia counties complain about their county’s size is and how hard it is to maintain all the roads.
We’re having a drought here in southeastern Pennsylvania, too, though no one is talking about it, probably because the growing season is over. The plants in the natural areas and the streams don’t seem to count for much–they’re expendable unless, of course, a stream is a drinking water source. This morning in the paper, there was an article about the salt line in the Delaware Estuary; it’s at its northernmost point since 2010 because of the drought in the river’s headwaters. The concern, of course, is that the salt line will reach drinking water intakes. Pennsylvania has begun to release water from upstream reservoirs to try to keep the salt line from creeping further upstream, but apparently those reservoirs are nearly at the limit of what they can spare, too. And, just yesterday, my land manager (who lives in an a colonial-era house on the property) told me that the pool in the old springhouse outside his house has dried up–the first time in 15 years.