2017 year in review: Stephens County Weather
Stephens County began 2017 with a major snow storm and ended the year almost the same way.
In both January and February of this year, Stephens County saw several inches of snow in three separate winter weather events.
Then this month, what was expected to be a light dusting of snow, turned into up to 4 inches of the white stuff as a winter storm passed through the area giving Stephens and surrounding counties an early white Christmas.
In September, Hurricane Irma marched across Georgia from Florida but didn’t bring with it enough rainfall to raise Lake Hartwell’s lake level.
Officials with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Savannah District had hoped the Hartwell, Russell, and Thurmond Reservoirs would get an extra five to seven inches of rain from Irma as it passed over the Upper Savannah River Basin, but that was not to be.
Irma dropped up to three inches of rain overall as Irma moved through, but Corps spokesman Billy Birdwell said that did not make much of an impact.
By the time the hurricane was gone, Hartwell Lake stood at 652 feet mean sea level – still about eight feet below full pool leaving the reservoir still stuck in Drought Trigger Level 2 where it has remained the rest of this year.
And while it was not exactly a weather event, the solar eclipse this summer was probably the biggest scientific event of the year.
It happened on Monday, August 21st and millions from Washington state to South Carolina were able to view it.
Thousands gathered in downtown Toccoa to watch the eclipse hoping to use a pair of eclipse glasses provided by Main Street Toccoa and several local businesses, but that almost didn’t happen.
About a week before, it was learned that some of the glasses being distributed were fakes.
Local Optometrist Dr. Kay Royal was one of those who believed some of the eclipse glasses she received to hand out to patients were fake.
But in the weeks following, Dr. Royal said none of her patients reported any vision problems after viewing the solar eclipse.