34% Of Georgia In Class 4 Drought; 82% Of Alabama In Class 3 Or 4

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Over half of Georgia, including all the counties in the Athens area, are now in extreme or exceptional drought, the most intense designations, according to the latest information from the United States Drought Monitor, a cooperative effort of the federal government and the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

The percent of the state in the worst status, exceptional drought, is now 34 percent, up from 22 percent in just one week. That’s partly a statistical anomaly, because some short-lived intense rains in August are no longer included in the drought monitor’s 90-day calculations, explained University of Georgia agricultural climatologist Pam Knox.

But it’s also because of the extraordinary lack of rainfall in the Southeast over the past several months, she said. Many cities have gone two solid months with no measurable rain, and the drought-impacted area now extends west to Oklahoma, north to Ohio, and south into the northern Florida panhandle as well as much of the East Coast.

The drought is most pronounced in Georgia’s western neighbor, Alabama, where 82 percent of that state is in extreme or exceptional drought, leaving farmers with a grim outlook as they look forward to next year. The dry conditions have also provided an ideal environment for raging wildfires that have now torched more than 100,000 acres in Georgia and other states.

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http://onlineathens.com/local-news/2016-11-24/drought-worsens-rains-could-come-next-week#