The March 2026 Edition
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March ran well warmer than usual and came in wetter than usual, 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.
March along the creek
The average of the highs and lows came to 61.7 degrees, 5.7 degrees warmer than normal for March.
Our station measured 6.82 inches of rain, against a normal of 5.66 at the Birmingham airport. The wettest day was March 11, with 2.00 inches.
At the Birmingham airport, whose record goes back to 1930, it was the second warmest March on the books.
Weather logIt reached the high water line, 3.5 feet at Republic, on three days, in two separate rises.
Its highest reading, 7.38 feet on March 12, was higher than the 6.17 feet the creek reaches in a typical March 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, March finished in the warm third for temperature and the middle third for rain.
NOAA's outlook, issued February 28, gave a 70 percent chance of a warmer than normal month. That was right.
FIVEMILE made no call for March, because the record had no clear lean after a warm February.
Since August 2014, NOAA's temperature outlook for these three towns has been right 61 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.
Candlemas is February 2, an old church feast day that falls about halfway between the first day of winter and the first day of spring.
Candlemas this year was dry at the airport, and the six weeks after it ran milder than normal, so the saying did not hold in 2026.
National GeographicA lion is a rough start to the month and a lamb is a gentle end, and the saying runs the other way too.
March came in gentle and went out gentle at the airport, so the saying did not hold in 2026.
Farmers' AlmanacApril ahead
NOAA's Climate Prediction Center gives these three towns a 40 percent chance of a warmer than normal April, and no lean either way on rain.
FIVEMILE has no call for April. After a warm March, 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 72 to 78 degrees over April, and normal rain for the month is 5.08 inches.
It froze at least once in April in 37 of the 96 years on the airport record, and the latest freeze on record in the month came on April 23, 1986.
The days gain 57 minutes of daylight over April, from 12 hours and 33 minutes on the 1st to 13 hours and 30 minutes on the 30th.
AlmanacDates in April
Calendar →Jefferson County tornado siren test
Graysville City Council meeting
Brookside Town Council meeting
Cardiff Town Council Meeting
Graysville City Council meeting
Household Hazardous Waste Collection
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.