Birmingham’s Means and Extremes for January

In just a couple of days, we will close the books on 2009. It is a year that we will remember for its rainfall. As Brian Peters has reported, we have received 71.49 inches of rain this year at the Birmingham Airport. This ranks 2009 as the fourth wettest year since 1900. We could see another inch this week, but that will not be enough to push us into third. Still, it was a remarkable year.

Now we are ready to turn the page and move into 2010. Let’s take a look at January in Birmingham from a climate standpoint. January represents the depths of winter in Central Alabama. He days are growing longer, but you can hardly tell it in the month’s temperatures. The average January high in Birmingham is 52.8F, the average January low is 32.3F, both the coldest averages of the year. The coldest average low for the month occurred in 1940, during one of the Magic City’s greatest cold waves.

There is not much difference in the readings at the beginning of the month and the end of the month. On the first, the average high is 53F, the average low 33F. On the last day of the month, the average high is 55F, the average low 33F. The coldest all time reading in Birmingham is -6F on January 21, 1985. It has been as warm as 81F on January 10th, in 1949. The mercury drops to 32F or below on around 17 days in the month.

On average, Birmingham receives 5.45 inches of rain, making it the second wettest on average. Only March is wetter. Rain generally falls on 11 days in the month. 13.37 inches of rain fell in 1937.
Birmingham receives 1.41 inches of snow on average, with nearly one half (0.70 inches) falling in the first month of the year. 11.80 inches of snow fell in 1936.

January is the cloudiest month of the year. The sky is cloudy 48% of the time on average. It’s also the foggiest month, with dense fog reported on 1.3 days on average during the month.

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Category: Pre-November 2010 Posts