Drying Out

As I promised last time, I'd blog about "something weather".  Here we go.  Well, we are now starting to dry out a little bit from the recent rains.  Parts across extreme north GA saw 3-5" with some localized spots picking up more than that.  All the flood warnings for area rivers and streams are expected to expire today.  The big story was the rebound of the area lakes.  Lake Allatoona has come up 9.7' since Monday.  Lanier has come up about 2.3', but a very interesting note about Lanier.  Mr. John Rusk emailed me to let me know (which I hadn't realized until I looked it up and saw it myself) that the amount of water that flowed into Lanier on Tuesday was the highest one day amount since March of 1998.  The lake is also up higher today than it was this time last year.  Hopefully the lake can get above 1060' this season, if not higher.  If you want to look up pages and pages of numbers on the area lakes, you can access the Army Corps site here.

Next Chance For Rain

As advertised, the next rain is due to arrive this weekend.  It looks like the best chance for rain will be between 3pm and midnight Saturday.  We're expected to pick up around a half inch across the region with this system.  So, if you have anything to get done outside Saturday, the early part of the day through early afternoon should be fine.  By time we wake up Sunday the rain should be long gone, but it will be noticeably windy and cooler.  Highs Saturday will be near 60, but highs Sunday may only hit the low 50's at best.

Cold Air Next Week

We'll have a cold surge early in the week, but the second surge could be quite cold.  Looking at the map left, that is our projected surface map for Thursday.  A massive high will be pouring out of Canada, bringing some of the coldest temps of the season.  That should be followed by yet another cold blast by next weekend.  The long wave pattern has us in the left region of the trough, which should keep us in the dry NW winds and should keep steering these fronts through, ushering in wave after wave of cold.  This will mean several days with lows down in the teens and 20's and highs only in the 40's.  We've heard some rumblings from the usual suspects about temps in the single digits and snow for next week.  As it looks right now it won't be quite that cold and probably too dry to support precipitation.  But, we'll be watching just in case.  More this weekend.

That should do it for now.  I'll blog at you again Sunday.  Don't forget you can track the storms using our supertracker or the local radars on our weather page.  Have a good one.

Steve Milone / FOX 5 Weather Authority