Daggers of light reflect off of the wet pavement on Washington Road. JOHNATHAN ERNST/STAFF

Area gets a soaking

Web posted January 16, 1998

 City's namesake suffers from storm
Local weather forecast

By Karin Schill
Staff Writer

When it rains, it pours. This soggy winter, anyway, that old adage appears to hold literally true.

After receiving twice the normal amount of rain in December -- nearly 7 inches -- the Augusta area was getting soaked again Thursday. By early afternoon, enough rain had fallen for Richmond County Emergency Management Director Pam Tucker to keep an eye on the city's many flood plains.

``Right now everything's OK, but we continue to monitor just in case something would happen,'' she said.

The city's improvements in flood-prone areas, including the widening of Rae's Creek, will help, Ms. Tucker said.

``But it doesn't matter how many measures you take to prevent flooding,'' she added. ``If we get enough rain, it'll flood.''

Water levels at Thurmond Lake were a foot higher Thursday than the U.S. Corps of Engineers would like for it to be at this time of year: 327.5 feet above sea level.

``We're just a little high based on where we should be and that's being addressed as we speak,'' said Phiny Davis, the agency's power project manager. ``We've been releasing additional water to keep the lake down.''

He agreed the amount of rain that's fallen on the two-state area in recent days is no cause for concern. At least not yet.

Georgia farmers haven't been so fortunate.

Rain has so drowned some cotton fields that those farmers who venture out in their tractors to harvest their crop must be plucked out of the soggy mess by wreckers and bulldozers.

Some areas of the state have had more than 40 inches of rain since September.

``It's reduced our yield significantly, knocking cotton on the ground and it's greatly reduced the quality,'' Steve Brown, a cotton expert at the University of Georgia extension service, said Thursday. ``There's a lot of discouragement in the field right now.''

Farmers are usually done harvesting their cotton crops by the end of November. But because of the wet weather, about 10 percent of Georgia's cotton crop remains in the field.

Farmers in Burke County have lost about $10.5 million in cotton crops, and yields have averaged about 600 pounds per acre, well below last year's 900-acre average, extension agent Richard McDaniel said.

A forecaster at the National Weather Service, Richard Charnick, blamed this winter's rain on El Nino, the unusual weather pattern in the Pacific Ocean that's expected to wreak havoc in much of the world this year.

That could in part explain the season's unusually warm temperatures as well, he said.

The first half of January has been an average 55.3 degrees Fahrenheit, which is nine degrees warmer than normal. While the cloud cover means cooler days, it keeps the nights warmer, making for overall warmer weather, Mr. Charnick said.

Associated Press reports were used in this article.