NWS Atlanta Weekly Weather Briefing - May 21st, 2026

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:01]Good afternoon everyone. This is Carmen Hernandez here at the National Weather Service in Peachtree City, Atlanta for your routine weekly weather briefing for North and Central Georgia valid through next Thursday, May 21st.

[00:00:16]Starting off with our key messages and hazard outlook, our key messages for today are we have gusty winds as well as low RHs through the evening with gusts up to 20 to 25 mph. This has led to a fire danger statement being issued for portions of East Georgia, which we will get into in the next slide.

[00:00:36]Also, I want to talk about the warming trend in the next week with temperatures between 5 to 7° above normal. Be mostly in our low temperatures where we see more of those above normal temperatures.

[00:00:48]And then our next chance of rain for Wednesday into Thursday of next week is possible with a frontal boundary.

[00:00:54]We are keeping it at green through the next 7 days as we are not expecting any weather impacts at this time with varying clear skies into increasing cloud cover, but overall no rainfall expected with temperatures climbing into the mid to upper 80s as the week goes on.

[00:01:17]Looking at our current weather conditions, you can see the front that pushed through the area yesterday, which has led to these gusty northwest winds as well as dry air in places you see in the water vapor imagery there with the very large area of oranges on there contributing to our low RHs that we'll talk about as well.

[00:01:41]For today, we did just issue a high fire danger statement for high fire danger conditions through 8:00 p.m. today. This is in portions of East Georgia as you see and pushing into the metro. This is for areas of relative humidity expected to be 25% or less. We're already seeing relative humidity values start to dip down close to 25% as well as winds out of the northwest at 10 to 15 mph sustained with gusts up to 20 to 25 mph.

[00:02:13]We're already starting to see those gusts across the area, but especially in this area.

[00:02:18]So, just a reminder, refer to your local burning permitting authorities whether you may burn outdoors, and if you burn outside, please use extreme caution.

[00:02:30]Moving on to the past 7-day rainfall totals, we're seeing here a lot of this happened earlier in the 7-day time frame, but we saw rainfall amounts from 1/2 inch to 4 inches over the past 7 days with most of this rainfall more happening in central and southern Georgia. You see Columbus there with about 3.6 inches over the past 7 days.

[00:02:51]Overall, this was beneficial rainfall over central Georgia in portions of southern Georgia with small minor improvements in the drought status as you'll see in a couple of slides, but overall, the long-term drought continues despite the rainfall because we'll need multiple weeks of rainfall at this point. Again, unfortunately, dry conditions are expected through Wednesday next week, which will not help out with the drought.

[00:03:18]So, drought conditions, like I said, continue despite the recent rain. There is a small portion of Georgia that did improve to a D1 moderate, but overall, the entire state of Georgia is under at least D1 to D4 exceptional drought. The D4 conditions continue across south and portions of central Georgia. There was some minor improvement in southwest Georgia to a D3 extreme drought, though.

[00:03:48]Um overall, minor improvements, but overall staying relatively the same.

[00:03:54]And the recent rainfall did help prevent some of the expansion, but again will not erase the ongoing conditions cuz it'll take weeks to months of sustained average to above average rainfall for this.

[00:04:07]Also, our latest drought information statement will be available later today at weather.gov/ffc/drought and we'll include that in the email that we send out.

[00:04:20]So, taking a look towards the latter half of this next 7 days, we are looking at the potential for our next chance for rain. You see this cold front extending through the pushing into the eastern conus here Wednesday into Thursday. This is going to lead to increased rain chances as long as the front is able to hold together. And then of course, thunderstorms are possible especially with temperatures affected being in the upper 80s, but this is going to be highly dependent on the timing of the front. If it comes through more in the afternoon, we'll have a higher chance for thunderstorms, but if it comes through overnight, it might just be more rainfall. Overall though, expecting some beneficial rainfall to come in the middle to late part of next week as long as this front can hold together.

[00:05:08]Here are those warming temperatures into next week with the high and low temperature forecast mostly focused around metro Atlanta, but most of these temperatures can be taken for north and central Georgia as well with the exception of the mountains of course where we'll see temperatures maybe about 5° below what we see here. We're expecting mild high temperatures Thursday where it feels pretty nice out there right now in the mid-70s. But we're going to start that warming trend into the weekend getting into the mid and then upper 80s through mid next week.

[00:05:41]Also, I'm going to talk about the cooler start to Friday morning. Looks like lows are on in the 50s which will be really nice, upper 40s as well. Kind of a last shot of cool air before the summer temperatures take over. Then you see those low temperatures really increasing into the mid to upper 60s as the week goes on, unfortunately.

[00:06:02]Rain again is unlikely until at least the middle of next week for most of North and Central Georgia.

[00:06:09]Looking ahead though, maybe a little bit of good news here for at least rainfall, but our temperatures are leaning above normal for the 6 to 10-day outlook, so that would be May 19th through 23rd.

[00:06:21]And but our precept is also leaning above average, so we might see some more beneficial rainfall coming into the area over the next 6 to 10 days.

[00:06:32]Looking into the 8 to 14-day temperature and precipitation outlook for May 21st through 27th, we are again looking at leaning above average um and looking at leaning above average for precipitation and temperatures. It's as the summer starts to push into this air time.

[00:06:55]Lastly, just going over the key messages again in hazard outlook, we are seeing gusty winds through the evening with gusts up to 20 to 25 mph with relative humidity values in the 25 to 30% range, which led to a fire danger statement today. We're looking at a warming trend into next week with temperatures around 15 5 to 7° above normal. The next chance of rain Wednesday into Thursday of next week. Overall, mostly it's just going to be a cloud cover forecast with many days of mostly clear skies with some increasing cloud cover on Saturday and Sunday, but again no rainfall expected until at least Wednesday.

[00:07:34]As always, we are here for you if you need anything from us, here is our contact information here. Um I hope you all have a great week. Thank you.