2021 Weather Year in Review: Wild swings

It was a warm, mostly wet year for Northeast Georgia.

Temperature: Temperatures took some abnormal swings throughout the year, with the year starting off above normal then turning cooler for the summer. The cool summer can largely be attributed to the above normal rainfall that came through. The real story of the year was the month of December which ran incredibly warm. As a whole, the month of December was 7-9 degrees above average region-wide. In some locations this was the warmest December on record. Record highs were broken several times and record warm morning lows occurred scarily frequently. This extreme warmth does not look poised to continue into the New Year, though January 1st will be quite toasty.

Record highs recorded across North Georgia Friday

For the year, Cornelia came in 1.8 degrees above normal, Blairsville 0.8 degrees above normal and Gainesville up 0.9 degrees.

Precipitation: Precipitation followed a similar, albeit opposite, trend for the year. We kicked off below normal for most of the region, with the higher elevations towards Blairsville being an exception. We would run near or just below normal until the incredibly wet period of June through October. Blairsville recorded an incredible 11.01″ of rain in August, thanks in part to Tropical Storm Fred and Hurricane Ida, both of which dumped plentiful rain across all of North Georgia. Things stayed wet until November when the pattern made a major shift and we suddenly dried out. We would run well below normal for November and December with drought conditions developing across the entire region for most of December.

In total, Cornelia would end the year 6.08″ above average with Blairsville up 7.71″ and Gainesville over by a respectable 6.32″

Snow: Snow was extremely hard to come by in 2021. We only saw one accumulating snowfall across the entire region and it came way back on February 7th. Of course the higher elevations saw a bit more than that, and just at the end of 2020 we had a white Christmas across much of the area. We’ve started this winter off far too warm for snowfall but hopefully that changes as we head into 2022.

Snow blankets North Georgia but doesn’t linger

Severe Weather: While we escaped 2021 with no particularly bad severe outbreaks, there were 2 tornadoes confirmed in the region. One was in EF-0 in Lumpkin County on May 4th. The second was an EF-1 in Banks County associated with Tropical Storm Fred on August 17. Fred also brought flooding to large parts of the region and gusty winds.

Fred unleashes damaging tornadoes and floods across Georgia

Overall some parts of 2021 will certainly remain in the record books for some time to come. The widespread flooding from Fred and the extreme warmth of December are both things that won’t be easily forgotten. Hopefully we see another uneventful 2022.

Below I have comprised a table of the monthly temperature and precipitation departure from normal and the maximum/minimum temperature for Cornelia, Gainesville and Blairsville.

I hope everyone has a great New Year!