6/23/17
(Sautee)- The drought report released Thursday by the National Drought Mitigation Center shows Georgia’s overall drought-coverage area has decreased significantly this past week.
WRWH Weather Reporter Bill Kinsland after reviewing the report said some 30 percent of Georgia’s land area is now in some degree of drought. By comparison, last week, some 37 percent of the state was affected by drought.
Although there has been only slight improvement in the past week, as of June 20th, slightly less than half of White County’s land area is classified as being in “Moderate Drought” (D1) and the remainder of the county has “Abnormally Dry” (D0) conditions.
Bill said, this compares favorably with one month ago when two-thirds of the county was in an “Extreme Drought” (D3) and the remainder was in a “Severe Drought” status(D2).
While there is great improvement in our overall status, we still have below-normal ground-water and surface-water levels. Also our year-to-date and 12-month rainfall totals remain below normal.
As of 7 AM Thursday morning, White County’s year-to-date rainfall stands at 28.00 inches which is 3.45 inches below normal.
According to NOAA forecasters at National Weather Service in Peachtree City, the current 90-day outlook for June through August shows that most of northern Georgia can expect above-normal temperatures and near-normal precipitation.
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WATER-LEVEL DATA (as of 7 AM 6-22-2017):
-A)Chattahoochee River level at Helen is 0.56 ft which is -0.34 ft below normal (0.90 ft).
-B)Water level at Lake Lanier is 1064.64 ft. which is -6.36 ft below normal pool (1071.00 ft.)
-C)USGS well level at Unicoi State Park is -5.28 ft which is -0.81 ft below normal (-4.47 ft.)
-D)Soil moisture at Three Sisters Vineyards was 27.4%.
