The September 2026 Edition

The average of the highs and lows came to 79.9 degrees, 4.3 degrees warmer than normal for September.

Our station measured 0.85 inches of rain, against a normal of 4.00 at the Birmingham airport. The wettest day was September 11, with 0.53 inches.

At the Birmingham airport, whose record goes back to 1930, it was the second warmest September on the books.

It never reached the high water line, 3.5 feet at Republic.

Its highest reading, 2.27 feet on September 21, was lower than the 3.58 feet the creek reaches in a typical September 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.

130 stories ran in September, not counting obituaries.

Four were about Graysville, one about Cardiff, and one about Brookside. The rest were about the county and the places around the three towns.

Four species were recorded in Graysville, Cardiff, and Brookside for the first time on file, among them Plicate Rocksnail, North American Wheel Bug, and Orangenacre Mucket.

Set against the same month in 1991 to 2020 at the Birmingham airport, September finished in the warm third for temperature and the middle third for rain.

NOAA's outlook, issued August 31, gave a 50 percent chance of a warmer than normal month. That was right.

FIVEMILE called it warm, because after a warm August, September had come in warm in 12 of 25 years. That was right.

Since August 2014, NOAA's temperature outlook for these three towns has been right 65 times and missed 33 times, with no lean 46 times. FIVEMILE has been right all three times it has made a call since January 2026. A call made by guessing would be right about one time in three.

The dog days run from July 3 to August 11, named for Sirius, the Dog Star, which lines up with the sun in the middle of them.

The hottest day of the summer at the airport, 102 degrees, came on September 4, outside the dog days.

NOAA's Climate Prediction Center gives these three towns no lean either way on temperature, and a 40 percent chance of a wetter than normal October.

FIVEMILE's call is a warmer than normal October. After a warm September, October has come in warm in 18 of 33 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 82 to 70 degrees over October, and normal rain for the month is 3.34 inches.

It froze at least once in October in 22 of the 96 years on the airport record, and the earliest freeze on record in the month came on October 18, 1948.