ATLANTA -- The report is grim. Lake Lanier is up from where it was at wintertime but it's still 13 and a half feet below where it should be. We're greening up and the soil moisture is up therefore hope is up that the drought is ending. But hope and reality is not the same thing.

"We are at the best that we can expect probably through October," said state climatologist David Stooksbury.

It's a sobering statement from the Georgia state climatologist. The consensus among drought experts at Tuesday's workshop in Peachtree City is our unprecedented drought is not over. Lake Lanier is lower right now than it was at this time last year.

Areas like Lake Lanier have shown improvement but the forecast for the summer and drought relief is bleak.

"Recovery will be slow but there's still a chance out 18 months from now, in June of 2009, about a 10-15 percent chance that we could still be at the severity that we are right now. In other words, reservoirs could still be low. But that also means that there's a high probability that things are going to recover," said Marty Hoerling with NOAA.

Recovery is the mode of Jamie Donaldson's family nursery business. After a harsh fall and winter with sales, he's had to alter his colorful inventory this spring with drought-resistant plants.

"Everybody's going to buy $20-$30 worth of bedding plants to get the color in their yard. But when you start talking about $200-$300 trees it's kind of tough right now with the economy going on," said Donaldson. He agreed with Channel 2's David Chandley that he would have to sell a lot of bedding plants this spring.

At the workshop, researchers are using the current drought to predict future ones. But they admitted, that predicting when this one will end is puzzling.

"If we just had normal, summer weather, which of course we know is hazy, hot and humid, we're going to see soil moistures drop, we're going to see stream flows drop and we're going to see reservoirs level drop. So that is the concern," said Stooksbury.