WEATHER: Rainy forecast set to continue for Northwest Georgia over coming days

The chances for wet weather remain as summer’s unofficial start with Memorial Day weekend turning into a rainy one for the books.

Look for the forecast to continue to produce shower chances with sunshine in between heading into the final days of May and the opening of June as NWS Peachtree City expects highs to remain in the 80s, overnight lows in the 60s and showers and thunderstorms likely for the coming week.

After a historically dry stretch through fall, winter and spring, it seems Mother Nature is intent on delivering all the rainfall possible over the next few days as moisture being drawn up from the warming Gulf Caribbean Sea settles over the Southeast and brings the much-needed rainfall.

Chances for wet weather heading into the latter half of the week will give some relief on Thursday with only slight chances, but ramp back up for the weekend as the likelihood of showers hits the 80% and higher range.

Rainfall should taper off some during the overnight hours this weekend ahead, but look for June to open with showers and thunderstorms possible as temperatures remain mostly mild through the opening weeks of summer break around the southeast.

Some sunshine should be expected for the opening days of June, but chances of rain in the extended forecast are still possible as the forecast develops over the coming days.

Drought conditions persist

The U.S. Drought Monitor still has much of Northwest Georgia under either severe or extreme drought conditions as of late last week, even with the elevated rainfall amounts experienced over the past days.

The service that monitors dry conditions out of the University of Nebraska has most of the border counties with Alabama – Chattooga, Floyd, Polk and Haralson under just severe drought conditions, along with much of Bartow and Gordon counties. Most of Dade, Catoosa and Walker counties still remain under extreme drought conditions, along with all of Paulding, and portions of Gordon, Bartow, Haralson and Polk Counties still under D3 level conditions of extreme drought.

Rainfall from the opening days of the summer break should help relieve conditions through Northwest Georgia, but expect conditions to still take some time to go back to normal if the rainfall lasts.

Metro areas of the state that have official 30-year rainfall totals have shown major decreases since last fall compared to average rates.

Most of the state remains under severe drought conditions, while a swath of the state from the coastal plains to the southwest border counties with Florida are under exceptional drought conditions, and have remained so through much of the first half of 2026.

Hurricane season set to open

Some good news with the threat of El Nino? Hurricanes may not blasting away at coastlines across the Southeast and Caribbean Sea this summer and fall.

The National Hurricane Center’s prediction for the season ahead of the official June 1 start is between 8 and 14 named storms, with only as many as six of those developing into hurricane-strength storms, and maybe 3 of those turning into major hurricanes.

Hurricane development requires specific conditions between atmospheric winds, temperature, water temperature and evaporation as storms come off the western Sahara coast of Africa and meet winds blowing from westward sources over the Pacific. When they combine and create the cyclonic effects, tropical storms and hurricanes are able to develop. (They are essentially the same thing in the Pacific and Indian oceans, just dubbed “tropical cyclones.”)

Since El Nino is expected to impact higher atmospheric winds coming off the Pacific and into the Caribbean Sea, those winds will essentially act as a force to break up storms before they are able to form. Combined with weaker trade winds predicted by the NHC’s forecast modeling due to the impacts of a greater-than-normal El Nino cycle in the Pacific and warmer than average Atlantic waters, it’ll lead to less tropical development overall.

So good news for sunbathers this beach season: the forecast won’t be broken up (more than likely) by evacuation orders from cities along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.