Lanier level at lowest since early Oct.

BUFORD - With mild drought conditions returning to parts of Georgia, the level of Lake Lanier has slipped to its lowest level since early last October.

That's when Lanier was recovering from a drought that affected most of the state for several years and just days before it reached full pool again.

The level of Lanier early Tuesday was 1069.71.

Several of the counties in the Chattahoochee River Basin, which feeds Lanier, are are among those in the state considered to be in a mild drought, state climatologist David Stooksbury said last week.

Stooksbury said "mild drought" is evident in parts of north-central, west-central and southwest Georgia. That means that those counties have received between 50 percent and 75 percent of normal rainfall for the past three months.

Much of the rest of the state is classified as "abnormally dry."

Stooksbury says that it's partly because temperatures across the state have been above normal. When that happens, the amount of water lost from soil by evaporation or plant water use increases.

(The Associated Press contributed to this story.)

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