The Georgia drought has finally been broken according to the United States drought monitor and my personal observations. I know I have mentioned the drought ever since I have had this blog. February finally brought some much needed rain to our area, but the problem was it came all at once. Some areas in Georgia saw 15-20 inches in one month!!! We didn't get that much in my county, but I think we totaled somewhere around 12 inches for the month.
The bad news is that much rain has made the ground too saturated to do any planting at this time. The good news is that all the hard work I put in December to fix some drainage issues appears to have worked. The ground is moist in my new garden area, but there are no issues with standing water. I think that if it can handle that much rain during the Winter, I should be in the clear.
Back to the drought situation, I did some research on the United States Drought Monitor when we started getting all this rain and it shocked me how bad our drought really was. I looked at the historical data and I had to go back to mid 2010 to the last time my area of Georgia was as wet as it is now. I didn't even start vegetable gardening until 2010, so all my garden experience has been under severe drought conditions. I decided to post some historical images of our drought from the drought monitor, they have data going back to 2000 on their site. I highly recommend using this drought monitor tool, it is really awesome.
Here is our current monitor, I am in mid east portion of the state right where that yellow area is. Yellow means no drought, just "abnormally dry" which is funny given how wet things are right now.
Now look at this, only one month ago, my area was in the next to highest rating. It has been in severe to extreme drought for over two years.
You have to go back to July of 2010 to the last time my area was not in drought.
