If it seems like we’ve been getting more rain than usual for the past few months, it’s not your imagination.

According to the National Weather Service, parts of metro Atlanta and North Georgia have experienced twice the normal rainfall over the past six months, pushing Lake Lanier above full pool for the first time in more than four years.

Matt Sena, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Peachtree City, said Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport has experienced 232 percent of normal rainfall over the past 90 days. Athens and much of North Georgia have received more than twice the normal rainfall over the past three months as well, he said.

"It didn’t take long, with this type of rainfall, to get Lanier back up where it needed to be, so that was a blessing there," Sena said.

As of 6:15 p.m. Sunday, the lake was at 1,071.64 feet, according to the U.S. Geological Survey’s Web site. That’s down slightly from a high of 1,072.14 on Friday.

The wetter-than-normal trend is expected to continue throughout the late fall and winter, Sena said, including this week.

The National Weather Service is predicting a 90
percent chance of rain Tuesday and 100 percent chance Tuesday night.

"A really good chance for the middle of the week — Tuesday and Wednesday — that’s when the main system should be approaching and sweeping through overnight," Sena said. "We’ll get a little bit of a break Thursday (and) Friday and then another chance of rain coming in late Friday or Saturday."

With warm air expected to move into the area ahead of the weather system, there should be no frozen precipitation or rain/snow mix this week, he said.

"It’s at least a short-term to ... moderate trend," he said of the rainy weather. "The outlook for the winter season was for a little bit above (normal), we’ve definitely gone more than a little bit above (normal) for rainfall. The rest of the winter is looking normal to a little bit above normal. That’s for the whole time frame, so we definitely could have dry periods within that."

A little more than 11 inches of rain fell at Lee Gilmer Memorial Airport in Gainesville in October, or 7 inches more than the normal, according to AccuWeather.com. Lake Lanier first reached full pool in mid-October.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has said they plan to keep the lake around the 1,070 mark all winter.