The February 2026 Edition
Every edition →Monthly
February ran a little warmer than usual and came in close to normal on rain, and Five Mile Creek rose over the high water line once.
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.
February along the creek
The average of the highs and lows came to 50.5 degrees, 1.7 degrees warmer than normal for February.
Our station measured 4.52 inches of rain, against a normal of 4.95 at the Birmingham airport. The wettest day was February 26, with 2.83 inches.
Weather logIt reached the high water line, 3.5 feet at Republic, on two days, in one separate rise.
Its highest reading, 6.68 feet on February 27, was about the same as the 6.82 feet the creek reaches in a typical February 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, February finished in the warm third for temperature and the dry third for rain.
NOAA's outlook, issued January 31, gave a 40 percent chance of a cooler than normal month. That missed.
On rain it leaned slightly toward a drier than normal month, and that was right too.
FIVEMILE made no call for February, because the record had no clear lean after a middle January.
Since August 2014, NOAA's temperature outlook for these three towns has been right 60 times and missed 33 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.
March ahead
NOAA's Climate Prediction Center gives these three towns a 70 percent chance of a warmer than normal March, and no lean either way on rain.
FIVEMILE has no call for March. After a warm February, 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 63 to 71 degrees over March, and normal rain for the month is 5.66 inches.
It froze at least once in March in 90 of the 96 years on the airport record, and the latest freeze on record in the month came on March 31, 1950.
The days gain 1 hour and 3 minutes of daylight over March, from 11 hours and 28 minutes on the 1st to 12 hours and 31 minutes on the 31st.
The spring equinox comes on March 20.
AlmanacDates in March
Calendar →Brookside Town Council meeting
Jefferson County tornado siren test
Graysville City Council meeting
Cardiff City Council meeting
Graysville City Council meeting
Spring Equinox
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.