8 Inches of Rain in Georgia - Will It Help Lanier?
Heavy rain has fallen in parts of the Southeast during the past 24 hours - to the tune of over 8 inches in some spots, with a widespread swath of 5 inches or more in southwest Georgia.
Unfortunately, the heaviest rain missed drought-famous Lake Lanier (northeast of Atlanta). An article from AccessNorthGA.com says that the lake was, however, saved from (another) all-time low that it flirted with last weekend, but it's up 3 inches so far this week (and that reading was probably from yesterday). Looking at the real-time graph from USGS, it looks like about 0.4 feet, or 4.8 inches this week:
It's been since August that this much rain has fallen over a wide area in Georgia... though sadly parts of the state are still below normal when you look at rainfall this year, and that comes after a record drought in 2007.
The official Government Drought Status Monitor confirms this, labeling only the northeast part of Georgia in a severe drought. Even after today's rain, it's going to take a lot more than one major rainfall event to erase the damage and fill the lake back up (in fact, some are proposing that the lake be filled by humans, as it may never return to its natural state without our help).
