ATLANTA — The drought is worsening in parts of North Georgia - and parts of the Atlanta metro are now included in the worsening drought designation. Without rain in our future in the next 7 to 10 days, it will likely continue to get more dire before some relief arrives.
The Level 3 'Extreme' drought has expanded since last week. Now, parts of Floyd, Whitfield, Murray, Fannin, Gilmer, Pickens, Gordon, Dawson and Cherokee counties are in those dire conditions, which joins Dade, Walker, Catoosa, and Chattooga from last week.
According to Georgia's State Climatologist Bill Murphey, many of these areas picked up less than an inch of rain since Sept. 1.
"Typically, October's a dry month, the driest month of the year for Georgia," he said. "September, November, right behind. But we just had this real quick, rapid, dry, you know, dry condition that came in."
Murphey said amid the lack of rainfall, "moisture-starved" weather systems didn't help conditions.
A local CoCoRaHS weather station in Ringgold has been the driest, with just 0.64 of an inch in the 2-month span. In Ball Ground, located in northern Cherokee County, the 2-month rain total is 1.3 inches which comes on the heels of two 5-inch rain months.
For the Atlanta area, a 'Moderate Drought' has entered the north and western sides of the metro, including Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, Forsyth and Gwinnett counties.
A Level 2 'Severe Drought' now extends across the rest of far north Georgia along the border with Tennessee and North Carolina.
Parts of North Georgia is under a severe, moderate drought - what that means
This drought goes past the ground just being dry. It's impacting Georgia's agricultural industry. Dr. Pam Knox, Agricultural Climatologist with the University of Georgia, said the dry weather and recent cold has been a 1-2 punch for northwest Georgia farmers.
"Northwest Georgia grows quite a bit of soybeans and corn for grain. They have forage for the cattle. They also grow some vegetables," Knox said. "It's been really dry. So a lot of that stuff has basically stopped growing because of the lack of rain."
He said the recent frost also helped kill off growing crops in North Georgia. This also has implications for farmers who raise livestock like cattle.
"It's really not a good situation, the pastures have stopped growing. The farmers have to feed their cattle something. So they've been feeding supplemental hay from what they grew earlier in the year, or they're purchasing hay or in some cases they're actually having to sell some cattle so that they can maintain the rest of their herd on what hay they've got," Knox explained.
He added that farmers may be forced to make further cuts to their herds to try to maintain what they can over winter.
Is North Georgia in for some rain?
This flash drought has been rapidly developing over meteorological fall, and there are signs that it may take until the end of the month before Georgia can start to dig out of it.
It has been 12 days since Atlanta has had measurable rain. That number will continue to grow. Over the next week, 11Alive Stormtrackers are not forecasting any significant rain chances.
According to Murphey, it'll be a gradual, gradual recovery as the El Niño pattern sets up for the winter.
"I would expect the Gulf to eventually open back up as we head into maybe December and January," he said. "But we're going to have to kind of work through the next few weeks. Again, you know, with the Gulf shutting off these dry fronts coming in and again ramping up fire hazard, I think that's a big concern."
North Georgia has had multiple active wildland fires in the last weeks, especially during Wednesday's red flag warning.