Rain Helping, But Not Ending Drought

The National Weather Service says that recent rains are making a dent in, but not ending, the ongoing drought in northeast Georgia.

Last week, Stephens County saw well over two inches of rain and more has fallen Sunday into today with more in the forecast for Tuesday.

Lauren Visin is a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Greenville-Spartanburg.

She said that northeast Georgia was facing a rainfall deficit of somewhere around a foot prior to these rains.

As a result, Visin said even another significant rainfall this week, something like three inches, would not bring a complete end to the drought.

“We would actually still be in drought,” said Visin. “It would lessen in severity.”

So far, downtown Toccoa has received 1.28 inches of rainfall since the last rain event started.

Visin did say that the short term weather pattern looks good for continued chances for rainfall.

However, she cautioned that it is hard to project too far out into the future.

“As of right now, we cannot say this is going to persist for the rest of winter, but getting out into the next week or week and a half, it looks like it is getting wetter. We have storms that are getting to us.”

According to Visin, the issue has been storms coming far enough south to affect this area.