MACON, Ga. — It's raining again on this fine Thursday in Macon. That is no surprise, and by now, you have probably wondered just how much rain we've seen recently.
The simple answer is 11.56 inches of rain. That is how much rain has fallen at the Middle Georgia Regional Airport in Macon-Bibb county since January 1st, but let's dive deeper and give this some context.
February 20th was the 51st day of 2020. If we extrapolate our current rainfall rate over the remaining days of 2020, we find that Macon is currently on pace for just over 88 inches of rain this year. Fortunately, it is unlikely that we see 88 inches of rain as this pattern will change over the coming days and weeks.
13WMAZ covers an area of approximately 9,600 miles. I crunched some numbers and found the following: If Macon's 11.5 inches of rain is averaged out over all of central Georgia, it would amount to 1.87X10^12 gallons. This translates to enough water to fill 2,842,546 Olympic sized swimming pools!
All of this rain has to go somewhere. Having such high rainfall totals in such a short period of time leads to saturated ground. Saturated ground leads to runoff. Runoff leads to rising river levels. If we don't get a break from these heavy rain producing systems soon, we'll continue to see the rivers rising significantly every time it rains. Let's hope for a change!
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