Showers this week will bring some short-term relief, but most
of Georgia is still in
varying degrees of drought conditions.

Entire state
dry

All of the state except the northwest corner is
experiencing moderate to severe drought
conditions. The northwest corner has mild drought
conditions.

As of now, the northeast, west central and southern third
of the state have severe
drought conditions, based on the Palmer Drought Severity
Index. The remainder of the state
has moderate drought conditions.

Outlook not
promising

The weather outlook through May doesn’t look promising. It
has taken a year for the
present conditions to develop. It’s going to take several days
of rain to make a
significant dent in the drought.

The dry conditions started in May 1998 and first became
critical last summer. Normally,
soil moisture is recharged during the winter. But that didn’t
happen last winter.

In October through March, total precipitation was in the
bottom 15th percentile for the
northeast and southern two-thirds of the state. With soil
moisture reserves extremely low,
early crop and pasture growth is being hindered. Dry soils are
inhibiting proper
germination of cotton in some areas of the state.

Soil moisture and crop
condition

County Extension Service agents rated 83 percent of the
state’s topsoil moisture as
short or very short. That’s up 16 points from last week, said
Bob Bass, state statistician
with the Georgia
Agricultural Statistics Service.

Crop conditions vary considerably. The wheat crop was rated
at 30 percent poor to very
poor, compared to 13 percent last week. But with 21 percent of
the onion harvested, 87
percent of the crop rated fair, good or excellent, Bass
said.