State climatologist says 2008 may be just as dry…
December 24, 2007 at 3:25 pm by Thomas Wheatley in NewsIf things go the way David Stooksbury predicts, prepare for a dry summer in 2008. The Athens Banner-Herald reports that the state’s climatologist told a group gathered at the University of Georgia’s Driftmier Engineering Center that while recent rains have helped the parched region, we’ve received less than half what we normally see this time of year.
“That means we are not receiving the recharge that is needed at this time of year for next summer. That is a big concern,” he said.
Stooksbury had already predicted a La Nina effect would bring the Southeast a drier and warmer winter. The Banner-Herald reports the climatologist saying that soil in Middle and coastal Georgia is drier. Even with reservoirs getting a jolt from the rain, streams and groundwater levels are lower. Since late September, the drought’s reach has spread farther south and closer to the coast. (Visit the Banner-Herald article to view an animation of the drought’s spread.)
That doesn’t exactly bode well according to what hydrologist Dan Sheer said last week to a meeting of the Metropolitan North Georgia Water District at the Atlanta Regional Commission. He said that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ reduced releases from Buford Dam have helped slow dwindling lake levels, but that those releases are set to change June 1.
“If the [reduced releases] expire in June and we have a repeat of last year, the reservoirs would dip into dead storage near the middle of September,” he said. “Lake levels would be reduced by 15 percent.”
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