Microseason 1 of 72 · January 1–5
The year turns in silence
A five-day window of the year, read through nine North American climate regions.
Same week, nine climates
A microseason names a five-day window of the solar year. What that window actually looks like on the ground depends on where you are. Below, the same calendar window read through each of nine North American climate regions.
- NENortheast Continental
The year turns in silence
Cold descends without ceremony — the city is briefly still.
- SESoutheast Subtropical
Frost quiets the live oaks
Winter silence settles over the Piedmont as live oaks hold their bronze leaves beneath clear skies.
- PNWPacific Northwest
The Year's Deep Silence
Fog settles into river valleys and holds. Minimal birdsong. The forest is suspended in cold, wet stillness.
- CACalifornia Mediterranean
New year in coastal mist
Marine layer blankets the coast; inland valleys still carry winter cold. Annual grasses begin stirring beneath mulch.
- MWMountain West
Deep freeze grips the high peaks
Alpine summits locked in silence; valley fog inversions trap cold air at lower elevations across the region.
- MPPlains Continental
Winter settles deep on the plains
The new year greets frozen grassland and dormant prairie under thick snow pack.
- SWSouthwest Desert
Desert awakens in still light
Clear dawn. Temperature gradient widens—night frost near 40°F, afternoon push toward 70°F. Desert quiet, sagebrush holding dew.
- TRTropical / Sub-Tropical
The year turns in trade winds
New Year in the tropics: trade winds steady, mangrove roots deep in salt, plumeria beginning to bud after the coolest months.
- AKAlaska Subarctic
Deep cold grips the interior
Ice fog settles over Fairbanks as the year's coldest stretch begins, temperatures plummeting below -30°F in subarctic valleys.
About the 72-microseason calendar
A microseason is a five-day window of the solar year — long enough to notice something change, short enough that the change is specific. The year holds seventy-two of them, six per month, ordered by what the natural world is doing rather than what the clock says. Almanac calendars like this are an old American habit, kept by farmers, gardeners, and birders for centuries; Weather Story collects them into a single reference.
Each microseason is read through nine North American climate regions. The phenological events that mark a five-day window vary with ecology — the strawberries that open in the Northeast might coincide with the first magnolias dropping in the Southeast and the salmonberry blossoms unfurling in the Pacific Northwest. Same week, nine ecologies, nine readings.