The April 2026 Edition
Every edition →Monthly
April ran a little warmer than usual and came in wetter than usual, 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.
April along the creek
The average of the highs and lows came to 66.1 degrees, 2.5 degrees warmer than normal for April.
Our station measured 6.90 inches of rain, against a normal of 5.08 at the Birmingham airport. The wettest day was April 29, with 2.45 inches.
At the Birmingham airport, whose record goes back to 1930, it was the second warmest April on the books.
Weather logIt reached the high water line, 3.5 feet at Republic, on two days, in one separate rise.
Its highest reading, 4.07 feet on April 29, was lower than the 7.14 feet the creek reaches in a typical April 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, April finished in the warm third for temperature and the middle third for rain.
NOAA's outlook, issued March 31, gave a 40 percent chance of a warmer than normal month. That was right.
FIVEMILE made no call for April, because the record had no clear lean after a warm March.
Since August 2014, NOAA's temperature outlook for these three towns has been right 62 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.
Dogwood winter is the old name for the cold snap that comes when the dogwoods bloom, which in north Alabama is usually early to mid April.
It came this year: the airport got down to 41 degrees on April 20, 12 degrees under the normal low.
Farmers' AlmanacMay ahead
NOAA's Climate Prediction Center has no lean either way for May, on temperature or on rain.
FIVEMILE has no call for May. After a warm April, 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 79 to 85 degrees over May, and normal rain for the month is 4.91 inches.
The days gain 42 minutes of daylight over May, from 13 hours and 32 minutes on the 1st to 14 hours and 14 minutes on the 31st.
AlmanacDates in May
Calendar →Gardendale Farmers Market
Brookside Town Council meeting
Jefferson County tornado siren test
Graysville City Council meeting
Electronics & Paper Shredding Drop-Off
Cardiff City Council meeting
Graysville City Council meeting
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.