It’s The Month of August, Number 79 in a series. For us, August was pretty average - maybe just a bit cooler - and fairly dry.

Here are the usual temperature anomalies products, at the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center.



The temperature anomalies were positive mostly in the West and New England, with the central US finally getting a bit of relief. We here in Georgia were among the coolest, relative to normal temperatures.

We find the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center’s precipitation plots here. Much of the US is under drought conditions this summer. August brought some relief, but drought conditions grew worse for the northwest quadrant of the US which was also experiencing the hottest weather. The green and white you see in the southeast had much to do with Hurricane Isaac as it made its way inland in the last few days of August.

For the Athens, GA area:

Here is a plot of our temperature swings in August, along with precipitation amounts as experienced in Wolfskin:



Most of August was cooler for us, with an average high temperatures of only 87.6 degF, 1.6F below normal. We had 0 days more than 1 standard deviation above normal highs (4.8 normal), and 0 days more than 1 standard deviation below normal lows (4.1 normal). We only broke one record, and that was for the low, 60F on the night of August 12, beating out 1967 for 61F.

For the first week, we had small amounts of rain almost every day. Two signficant rainfalls fell in the latter half of the month, but with stretches of dry weather in between. The 1.26" that fell August 28 was due to Isaac, as has been the additional 1.24" rainfall in the first few days of September.\

It’s almost silly to put in the temperature swings plot, but just for fun, here’s what a slightly below average high temperatures plot looks like, in green. Compare with red, a hot plot from last year. Blue is the historic highs for each day.



The monthly histogram shows the breakdown of high and low temperature range counts from August 1948 on. No significant difference in the high temperature ranges in August. Nighttime lows, however, were significantly higher in the mid-range events of 61-70 degF, and lower in the warmer range. Nights were significantly cooler in August.



The figure below shows the Athens precipitation data which are official for our area. As usual the green line shows our actual rainfall, the red shows the average accumulation expected. The black dots are rainfall over the last 20 years, the vast river of peach shows the standard deviation.



Our total out here was 2.70", and in Athens (shown here) it was 3.23". 3.53" is normal for August. We’re back to our less than average montly rainfall.

Prognosticator stuff:

What is the neat prognosticator telling us? For northeast Georgia, it’s changed somewhat since last month - cooler than average temperatures continuing for the next few weeks, then normal or slightly greater chance of warmer temperatures for Oct/Nov. Precipitation predicted to be basically normal.

ENSO stuff:

The folks at CPC have a version of PDF or HTML that is much different from their previous presentations, but at least it’s there and the link isn’t broken.

As of August 27, ENSO neutral conditions continue, but there’s a good chance of El Niño developing and continuing into northern hemisphere winter.

As of August 28, the US Drought Monitor continues to have us in extreme to exceptional drought, depending on where you are in Georgia. Much of the US is now under at least abnormally dry or moderate drought classification, with a lot of the country in severe or extreme drought. It’s possible that some of this may change once the results from TS Isaac are in.

NOAA’s Monthly State of the Climate product for July is available. The summary for 2011 regionally, nationally, and globally is also available.