So, after defending and then partially de-defending Governor Perdue’s prayer service to combat the drought, I suppose I should close the loop by pointing to this post at the Atlanta Water Shortage blog:
Lanier got 0.11 inches of rain yesterday (while the lake fell about 3 more inches) and has seen a total of 0.92 inches today. Sadly, despite the rain, the lake is down 0.05 feet for the day — about 1/2 inch.
A liberal religious person would note that if three clergy members from one corner of one religion could trigger almost an inch of rain, just imagine what could have been accomplished if a wider spectrum of religious folks had been invited to participate.
A cynical person would instead wonder if a lot of hot air being generated, either by public prayer, or the debate surrounding public prayer…or both…can have local weather impacts.
With that part of the country being as dry as it has been, an inch of rain isn’t going to help terribly much. But at least it’s something, if only to rinse some dust off cars in an area where car-washing is all but verboten.
Also, I should point out that another post at Atlanta Water Shortage directs readers to an article at the Lawrenceville Weather Blog that discusses the drought in the context of longer-term weather cycles:
There are also longer term ocean temperature trends, ones that my last from 30 to 70 years. One trend is the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, or AMO, that reflects ocean temperatures in the Atlantic. Another is the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, or PDO, that represents Pacific Ocean temperatures. These two long term trends tend to have some effect on the amount of rainfall seen in different parts of the country, including the Southeast.[...]
The bottom line is that we may be about a third of the way through a drought cycle that could last for the next 20 years. If we get any relief during that time, it’s likely to be because tropical weather brings the remnants of a hurricane through North Georgia. We might also benefit if the PDO moves into its cool cycle, and there is some evidence that that might be the case. Either way, we need to be thinking that the drought is a long-term problem, and not something that will be gone next spring.
The concept of multi-decade weather cycles is one that, depending on the viewpoint, is either ignored or abused in some discussions on climate change. It’s nice to see weather cycles reviewed in a global-warming-neutral sense…even if the resulting picture isn’t particularly pleasant for the Southeast.
