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Our automated weather channel is on the air around the clock: the radar, the temperatures, the week ahead — and when a warning hits the Valley, it stays with the storm.
Quiet End to Hurricane Season Leaves the Valley Waiting on Winter Rain
Is the Atlantic hurricane season over and will it rain more this winter in Columbus GA?
The National Hurricane Center expects no Atlantic, Caribbean or Gulf tropical development for seven days ahead of the season's November 30 close, and for Columbus and the rest of the Chattahoochee Valley the Climate Prediction Center gives a 60 percent chance of above-normal precipitation from Novem
Photo: MEHMET SÜTLAŞ / Pexels
Stand on a dock at Lake Eufaula in the middle of November and the most interesting thing in the tropics is what is not there. In its 7 AM outlook Thursday, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said tropical cyclone formation is not expected anywhere in the Atlantic, the Caribbean Sea or the Gulf during the next seven days. The Atlantic season officially closes on November 30, so that outlook covers most of what is left of it.
For a viewing area that sits a long drive from salt water, that sounds like good news, and in terms of wind and damage it is. It matters another way too. A tropical system that comes inland is one of the few weather makers that can rain over an entire river basin at once, soaking the headwaters and the lower reaches on the same day. Without one, the water in the Chattahoochee has to come from ordinary cold-season storms moving in off the west.
Right now there is room for it. The U.S. Geological Survey gauges tell the story in week-long averages, which is the honest way to read this river: the dams at West Point, Columbus and Walter F. George release water in pulses to make electricity, so a single reading can swing wildly inside one day. Averaged over the seven days through November 11, the Chattahoochee River in Columbus at the 14th Street gauge ran 1,970 cubic feet per second against a normal of 3,257 for those dates, about 60 percent of normal. The Chattahoochee River at West Point averaged 1,649 against a normal of 3,339, close to half. Below Lake Eufaula, near Columbia, Alabama, the week came in at 2,161 against 4,257.
The undammed water is in better shape. Upatoi Creek near Columbus averaged 138 cubic feet per second against a normal of 172, about 80 percent, which is the kind of number a small creek shows when it has been getting at least some rain.
The year as a whole has not been dry. Columbus Metropolitan Airport, where the official readings are taken, has recorded 43.71 inches since January 1, about two and a third inches ahead of the 41.36-inch normal for the date. The autumn is where the account slipped: 5.77 inches since September 1, against a normal of 7.40, roughly an inch and a half behind.
What happens next is being written in the Pacific, not the Atlantic. A very strong El Niño is in place, with an index of 2.46. Warm water along the equator strengthens the subtropical jet stream straight across the southern United States, and in the historical record that has meant a wetter and often cooler cold season along the Gulf South, with more storm systems crossing the region and a raised risk of severe weather in the Gulf states. The Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of above-normal precipitation here at 60 percent for November through January, with no strong lean on temperature, and no clear signal at all by the February-through-April stretch.
So if you watch the water from the RiverWalk between Columbus and Phenix City, from the banks at LaGrange and West Point, or from a boat ramp down at Eufaula, the refill this winter is likely to arrive as a train of frontal systems rather than anything with a name. One practical thing to carry out of that: an El Niño winter in Alabama and Georgia raises the odds of a stormy night in January as well as a rainy one, which makes this a good month to put fresh batteries in the weather radio in Opelika, Hamilton or Cuthbert and leave it where you can hear it.
Right now in Columbus, Georgia
52°Temperature
49°Dew point
90%Humidity
4 mphWind — west
29.82"Pressure
The next seven days
Day
High
Low
Rain
Conditions
TODAY
71°
40°
0%
Sunny
FRI
59°
35°
0%
Sunny
SAT
59°
33°
0%
Areas Of Frost then Sunny
SUN
61°
37°
1%
Widespread Frost then Mostly Sunny
MON
60°
38°
8%
Partly Sunny
TUE
62°
38°
8%
Mostly Sunny
WED
66°
40°
2%
Sunny
Written by the CNAW2 weather desk from CNAW2 weather desk data. Last updated November 12, 2026 at 8:46 AM Eastern. Covering Columbus and Phenix City, Auburn–Opelika, LaGrange, Eufaula and the rest of the 19-county CNAW viewing area.
