It looks like north Georgia is headed for a stormy end to the spring-like weather of the past week and that winter-like weather will return in the next few days.
Forecasters with the National Weather Service say a line of thunderstorms will track through Georgia from northwest to southeast beginning about 11:00 Sunday morning. According to an NWS Facebook posting, brief periods of heavy rain, damaging wind gusts, possible tornadoes, and downed trees "due to wet soils" are possible. The threat extends across parts of central, east-central and southeast Georgia.
Rainfall amounts are expected to range from 1.5-2 inches in most places, with locally heavier amounts and 2-3 inches in some mountain areas.
After the expected storms on Sunday, temperatures are going to plunge to more seasonal readings with lows across many places in north Georgia dipping, at times, into the low 20s with daytime highs only reaching the 40s. There may be some places in the mountains where readings drop into the teens at night and climb only into the 30s during the day. This system is part of an expected Arctic air mass that is going to sweep southward out of Canada, covering most of the lower 48 states.
Meanwhile, the NWS has released data showing that rainfall across the region for the 7-10 days ending last Sunday ranged from 2.15 inches in Atlanta to 5.12 in Gainesville to 9.9 inches in Dahlonega.
Heavy rains around and north of Lake Lanier helped push the level of the lake to within a few feet of its all-time high before the waters began to recede. The level Friday was 1075.72, still nearly six feet above winter full pool of 1070.
