By Clint Thompson
Pop-up thunderstorms this summer have made it feel rainier than it really has been across the Southeast. While some areas have experienced timely rains, the Aug. 27 release of the U.S. Drought Monitor shows much of the region is still experiencing drought-like conditions.
Pam Knox, University of Georgia Extension agricultural climatologist, discussed the current weather pattern.
“It’s a pretty typical summertime for Georgia rainfall when we don’t have any tropical systems coming through. It’s all this local stuff, and some areas get hit over and over again and other areas get missed,” Knox said. “The drought monitor has a really hard time dealing with that, because you can have people next door to each other that have completely different experiences. It’s very hard to capture that in the drought monitor.
“For us to get widespread rain, usually we either have to have a tropical system come through or we have to have a front and a pretty strong front to really develop the vertical dynamics to get rainfall going.”
Current dry conditions could only worsen in the near term since the forecasts for tropical development impacting the Southeast remain low.
“This year, just like last year, we really have not had any tropical storms that would come through. With the forecast for the strong El Nino, it’s likely we’re not going to see any tropical activity. The likelihood is lower than usual, because we’re just not going to expect that many storms in the Atlantic this year,” Knox said.
“We’re going into the driest time of year, so even if we weren’t in a drought, we’d expect things to get drier this time of year without the tropical activity. We’re going into the peak of tropical season right now, and there’s just nothing on the horizon for us. Last year, I think the drought in the fall contributed to the drought that we had over the winter and then really flared up again in the spring. We don’t have any soil moisture to work with. This year we could see another growing drought again just because we’re not expecting a lot of tropical rainfall.”