More than 45 million people across 14 Southern states are now in the midst of what’s being called a “flash drought.” Pam Knox, the director of the UGA weather network says conditions have worsened in Georgia.
“Currently as of this morning, 61% of the state is drought of some sort and 100% pf the state is abnormally dry,” according to Knox. “They did introduce in the last week; some small areas of what we call extreme drought.”
The state is seeing a variety of impacts as a result of the dry environments.
“Larger reservoirs are down a little bit, but I don’t think there’s any concern for water supplies, now the stream flows now are down quite a bit. Some of the smaller communities do take water out of streams so that is some concern to them.
Surprisingly, or maybe not surprisingly, the harvest of most crops is ahead of schedule right now and that’s because it’s been so nice every day. But we’re seeing reductions in the yield.”
This has been a particularly tough stretch for one of the state’s biggest producers.
“One of the biggest groups that’s hit right now is livestock producers because it’s been so dry that they have not been able to have their animals feed in pastures so they’ve had to feed hay, in some cases as early as June.”
Knox says while fall is typically a dry season for Georgia, this dry spell has been particularly long since the state hasn’t received any rain from tropical storms; and the temperatures have been unseasonably high.
She says we should see relief in the form of lower temperatures and possible rain this weekend.
