The January 2026 Edition
Every edition →Monthly
January ran a little cooler than usual and came in wet, and Five Mile Creek rose over the high water line twice.
This edition was put together on September 15, 2026, after the month was over, from the records as they stood. Its calls were worked out by the same rule as every other month, from what was on file before each month began.
January along the creek
The average of the highs and lows came to 42 degrees, 2.6 degrees cooler than normal for January.
Our station measured 10.62 inches of rain, against a normal of 5.03 at the Birmingham airport. The wettest day was January 9, with 1.90 inches.
Weather logIt reached the high water line, 3.5 feet at Republic, on two days, in two separate rises.
Its highest reading, 5.76 feet on January 25, was lower than the 6.14 feet the creek reaches in a typical January since 2008.
The high water line is the one the masthead uses. It is not a flood stage, because this gauge does not have one.
Creek logHow the calls did
Set against the same month in 1991 to 2020 at the Birmingham airport, January finished in the middle third for temperature and the wet third for rain.
NOAA's outlook, issued December 31, 2025, leaned slightly toward a warmer than normal month. That missed.
FIVEMILE made no call for January, because the record had no clear lean after a middle December.
Since August 2014, NOAA's temperature outlook for these three towns has been right 60 times and missed 32 times, with no lean 44 times. FIVEMILE has not made a call yet since January 2026. A call made by guessing would be right about one time in three.
February ahead
NOAA's Climate Prediction Center gives these three towns a 40 percent chance of a cooler than normal February, and a slight lean toward a drier than normal one.
FIVEMILE has no call for February. After a middle January, the record has no clear lean.
FIVEMILE does not call rain. In the airport record a wet month is followed by a wet one no more often than chance would have it.
Normal highs at the Birmingham airport rise from 56 to 63 degrees over February, and normal rain for the month is 4.95 inches.
The days gain 51 minutes of daylight over February, from 10 hours and 35 minutes on the 1st to 11 hours and 26 minutes on the 28th.
AlmanacDates in February
Calendar →Brookside Town Council meeting
Jefferson County tornado siren test
Graysville City Council meeting
Cardiff City Council meeting
Graysville City Council meeting
Severe weather sales tax holiday
Where this comes from The month's weather is the FIVEMILE weather station. Normals, ranks, records and the thirds a month is scored in are the official National Weather Service record kept at the Birmingham airport since 1930, set against 1991 to 2020. The creek is the USGS gauge on Fivemile Creek near Republic. The outlook is the monthly outlook from NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, read at the middle of the three towns. The stories are the ones the news page ran, the sightings are iNaturalist's research grade records, and the dates are the calendar's. FIVEMILE's call is a rule written down in advance: it looks at how the month just gone finished and at what followed every earlier year that started the same way. Every sentence here was written ahead of time and filled in from those records, and no edition is changed after it runs.