The July 2026 Edition
Every edition →Monthly
July ran about as warm as 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.
July along the creek
The average of the highs and lows came to 81.7 degrees, right at normal for July.
Our station measured 5.88 inches of rain, against a normal of 5.42 at the Birmingham airport. The wettest day was July 24, with 1.49 inches.
Weather logIt reached the high water line, 3.5 feet at Republic, on one day, in one separate rise.
Its highest reading, 4.69 feet on July 24, was lower than the 5.60 feet the creek reaches in a typical July 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 log18 species were recorded along the lower creek for the first time on file, among them Rustic Borer, American trumpet vine, and Asian Lady Beetle.
Nature WatchHow the calls did
Set against the same month in 1991 to 2020 at the Birmingham airport, July finished in the warm third for temperature and the wet third for rain.
NOAA's outlook, issued June 30, gave a 40 percent chance of a warmer than normal month. That was right.
FIVEMILE called it warm, because after a warm June, July had come in warm in 14 of 26 years. That was right.
Since August 2014, NOAA's temperature outlook for these three towns has been right 63 times and missed 33 times, with no lean 46 times. FIVEMILE has been right the one time it has made a call since January 2026. A call made by guessing would be right about one time in three.
August ahead
NOAA's Climate Prediction Center gives these three towns a 40 percent chance of a warmer than normal August, and no lean either way on rain.
FIVEMILE's call is a warmer than normal August. After a warm July, August has come in warm in 12 of 23 years at the airport.
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 fall from 91 to 89 degrees over August, and normal rain for the month is 4.35 inches.
The days lose 55 minutes of daylight over August, from 13 hours and 48 minutes on the 1st to 12 hours and 53 minutes on the 31st.
AlmanacDates in August
Calendar →Gardendale Farmers Market
Brookside Town Council meeting
Jefferson County tornado siren test
Graysville City Council meeting
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.