What to look for in nature in Arkansas this January

On the large reservoirs and big rivers, especially the White and Cache in the Delta, where open water keeps fish and ducks within reach. January is the heart of eagle season here. The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s nongame bird coordinator estimated in January 2025 that 150 to 160 pairs nest in the state, though the Commission no longer runs a formal count, and northern birds fleeing frozen lakes join them for the winter. She points eagle seekers toward the Corps of Engineers reservoirs, seasonally flooded rice fields, the Delta’s big rivers, Holla Bend refuge in the River Valley, and DeGray Lake.

Arkansas’s resident pairs are a separate story from the winter visitors. Once the bald eagle came off the federal endangered list, the money that had paid for monitoring nests was moved to birds still in steep decline, so the Commission relies on birders to tell it where active nests are. If you find an active nest with a breeding pair, the coordinator asks for exact GPS coordinates. Watch any nest from a long way off.

January is also when the eagles get counted. The National Midwinter Bald Eagle Survey began in 1979 under the National Wildlife Federation and passed to the U.S. Geological Survey in 1992; since 1984 volunteers have driven or boated the same standard routes each year. It falls in the first two weeks of January: in 2026 counters could go out any day from January 7 through 21, and January 9–10 was the weekend everyone aimed for. As of early October 2026, no 2027 dates had appeared.

When you see an eagle, write down whether it is an adult with a white head and tail or a mottled brown youngster, what it was doing, and how far it sat from open water. Run the same drive each January and you will have a midwinter survey of your own.

Hundreds of thousands of ducks, and in the six surveys in the table below between about 770,000 and 2.3 million light and white-fronted geese, in the Delta alone; the numbers rise and fall with rain. The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission flies two aerial surveys this month. The annual midwinter survey comes in the first half of January, and the late-January survey closes out the season. Biologists fly random transect lines across the Delta and turn what they see into estimates for each survey zone.

Water is the whole story. During the January 1–5, 2023 survey a storm dumped more than six inches of rain on parts of the southeast, including nearly eight inches at a gauge on George H. Dunklin Jr. Bayou Meto Wildlife Management Area, and the Delta total topped 1.5 million ducks for the first time in any survey since December 2011. A year later, in drought, the January 1–4, 2024 count of 269,693 mallards was the lowest midwinter estimate since transect surveys began. Winter 2025–26 was dry again, with many parts of the state having their second or third driest December in records going back to 1893; the early-January estimate came in 427,502 mallards under the long-term average. More than 140,000 of those mallards were packed into the Bayou Meto–Lower Arkansas zone, 43 percent of the Delta total.

Geese do not follow the duck pattern. While the ducks were scarce in January 2026, the same surveys estimated around 1.4 to 1.5 million light geese (snow and Ross’s) over the Delta.

The late-January 2026 flights were cut short by a major winter storm, and observers never reached the Little River Ditches zone. For the December numbers and the snow geese arriving, see the December page.

Yes, and sometimes in broad daylight. Elk vanished from Arkansas long ago. Their return began in 1981, when the Game and Fish Commission, working with Colorado, started releasing animals along the Buffalo River; over four years 112 elk from Colorado and Nebraska went into Newton County. The National Park Service says the herd numbers nearly 500 (its page was last updated in 2021); the animals range in and around the Commission’s core elk zone of Boone, Carroll, Madison, Newton and Searcy counties.

In summer the elk lie up in shade and come out to feed only at the edges of the day. Winter changes that. The Buffalo National River staff note that cold spells can bring elk out in daytime, and with the rut long over, look for groups of them out on the valley’s open pastures.

Elk tracks are rounder and much bigger than a deer’s, and a herd crossing a muddy pasture leaves a churned trail you can follow with your eyes. After a snow, sketch a set on the tracks page and measure it against your palm.

Because the water comes out of Hot Springs Mountain at an average of 143 °F, and the colder the air, the more visible the vapor rising from it. Hot Springs National Park protects 47 springs. The park says it goes through about 700,000 gallons of the water a day. The park says this rain fell on the Ouachita Mountains more than 4,000 years ago, about when the pyramids of Egypt were going up, and soaked down 4,500 to 7,500 feet through cracks in the rock before rising again along a fault at the foot of the mountain.

There is no volcano. The rock simply gets warmer with depth, by about 4 °F for every 300 feet according to the park, a process called the geothermal gradient, and the slowly sinking water heats with it. On the way it dissolves silica, calcium, magnesium and potassium. When it reaches the cool surface, calcium carbonate comes out of solution and builds the spongy gray rock called tufa that you can see around the display springs.

Note the air temperature and how high the steam climbs above the Cascade. On a still morning below freezing it can hang over the lawn; on a windy one it is torn away almost at once.

Starting families. Midwinter is when some of the state’s animals begin the next generation, out of sight in dens, old nests and woodland pools.

Snow, when Arkansas gets it, turns the woods into a guest book. Follow a line of fox prints to a mouse hole, find where a rabbit sat under a cedar, and draw them on the journal page for reading the signs.

By bark, by fruit that hangs on, and by the odd leaves that refuse to fall. With the canopy bare, January is the best month to learn the shapes and skins of trees you walk past all summer without seeing.

Pick one tree near home, draw its outline and a patch of bark for your tree through the seasons page, then return to the same spot in April, July and October.

Yes. At each of the eight Arkansas airport stations we checked in NOAA’s 1991–2020 normals, January has a lower average high and a lower average low than December or February. Normal January highs run from 46.8 °F at Jonesboro and 46.9 °F at Harrison to 50.5 °F at Little Rock and 55.9 °F at El Dorado; the coldest normal low is 25.1 °F at Fayetteville’s Drake Field. Snow is modest: the January normal is 1.1 inches at Little Rock, 1.4 at Fort Smith and 1.5 at Drake Field. February actually carries the larger snow normal at Little Rock (1.6 inches) and Drake Field (2.4), so winter is not done with Arkansas when January ends.

January also has history. The National Weather Service in Little Rock records the largest tornado outbreak in Arkansas, 56 tornadoes, in January 1999, and a devastating ice storm across the north in January 2009. Both came in La Niña winters.

This winter is the opposite case, and the odds look lopsided. In their September 10 update, federal forecasters put the odds above 90 percent that the Pacific warming reaches very strong status, the top tier, by the time Arkansas is deep in winter. The National Weather Service in Jackson, Mississippi, says El Niño generally makes winter and spring wetter and cooler across the Deep South, because the jet stream shifts south and pulls in more Gulf moisture. The same office cites a study of the 15 biggest tornado outbreaks, those with 40 or more tornadoes, in which only one came during El Niño, against six in La Niña years and eight in neutral years. For Arkansas in particular, a meteorologist with the Arkansas Weather Network told the Division of Agriculture in August that El Niño tends to bring a busier storm track in the cool season, but that if sharp shots of cold air arrive in January and February, rain may be harder to come by, with wetness possibly returning in March as El Niño fades. NOAA issues its winter outlook on October 15 and revises it monthly; Arkansas readers will find the current January–March temperature and rain maps among the 90-day outlooks at NOAA.

Before a trip to the Ozarks, check the current weather and radar, since a road that is wet in Little Rock may be glazed at Jasper. Gardeners already counting down to spring can look up their town on the Arkansas frost dates page.

A little over half an hour, depending on latitude. The solstice is behind us, and by January 31 each listed city has gained between 35 and 40 minutes, with Harrison, in the north, gaining most and El Dorado, in the south, least. Because Earth’s tilt and its oval orbit combine to shift local noon, the gains come unevenly: sunset moves later through the whole month, while the latest sunrises of the year fall in the first half of January, so mornings barely brighten until the second half of the month.

The oval orbit has a milestone of its own. Earth reaches perihelion, its closest point to the Sun for the year, at 8:33 p.m. Central on Saturday, January 2, about 91.4 million miles away. The Northern Hemisphere is coldest while Earth is nearest the Sun because the tilt, not the distance, sets the seasons.

Mark the sunset on the same day each week and you will see it slide north along the horizon again. For your exact town, the sunrise and sunset almanac gives the minute.

A strong meteor shower, the brightest morning planet, and the biggest full moon of 2027. Times here are Central Standard Time.

The darkest evenings fall around the January 7 new moon, roughly January 3 to 12. Check Today’s sky for a clear night between fronts, and look up your local moonrise on the moon phases page.

1. Friday, January 1: First Day Hikes. Arkansas State Parks has held ranger-led New Year’s Day hikes statewide since 2014, part of a national program in all 50 state park systems. For 2025 there were 46 guided hikes at 36 parks, plus self-guided hiking during New Year Week and a free sticker for finishers. Look for the 2027 list on the state parks site in late December.
2. What’s for Lunch? At Lake Dardanelle State Park in Russellville, staff feed live food to the fish in 8,000 gallons of aquariums stocked with Lake Dardanelle species, 11:30 a.m. to noon, free. The park’s listing shows feedings on Tuesdays and Saturdays through early November; January dates were not posted yet, so check before you go.
3. Sunday night, January 3: set an alarm for the Quadrantids before dawn on Monday.
4. Last chance for a Christmas Bird Count, until Tuesday, January 5. The 127th count season ends on the 5th; Audubon’s map shows any Arkansas circle still to be run and the compiler to contact.
5. Thursday, January 21: watch the Wolf Moon rise and see whether the children can spot it looking bigger near the horizon.
6. Friday to Sunday, January 22–24: Eagles Et Cetera at DeGray Lake Resort State Park, free.
7. All month: Project FeederWatch counts at the kitchen window, a winter tree hunt in the nearest park, and track hunting after any snow.
8. February preview: Arkansas backyards can join the Great Backyard Bird Count, February 12–15, 2027, the dates Audubon lists; details are on birdcount.org.

Park programs can change with ice and snow, so confirm on the park’s own listing the day before. Every state and month is gathered on the nature hub, and any outing on this list deserves its own entry in the Naturalist’s Field Journal.

• Waterfowl and the youth deer hunt. Duck, coot, merganser and goose seasons run through Sunday, January 31, so expect early-morning shooting in the Delta, on the Arkansas River and around the big reservoirs. The youth modern gun deer hunt is open in every zone on Saturday and Sunday, January 2–3. Archery deer season continues through February 28.
• Small game and furbearers. Squirrel and rabbit seasons are open statewide through February 28, and bobwhite quail through February 7 on private land, with different rules on some WMAs. Crows may be hunted Thursdays through Mondays until February 21. Hunting seasons for bobcat, fox, mink and river otter run to February 28, and furbearer trapping to the same date; beaver, nutria and coyote trapping continues to March 31.
• Hunter orange. Where a deer, bear or elk season for modern guns or alternative firearms is under way, AGFC rules put every hunter and companion in a hat and an upper-body garment of hunter orange, chartreuse or blaze camouflage, totaling at least 400 square inches of color above the waist. Migratory bird hunters do not need it. In January that applies chiefly to the youth hunt weekend, but bright colors on public land are wise all winter, for you and your dog.
• Ice, on ponds and on roads. Arkansas ponds rarely freeze thick enough to bear weight, so keep children and dogs off them. Freezing rain is the state’s signature winter hazard: it snaps limbs, drops power lines and glazes bridges first. When an ice storm is forecast, stay home and stay out from under loaded trees.
• Cold and wind. Even with highs near 50 °F, nights below freezing are normal, and wind on an open lake or a Delta levee makes it feel much colder. Wear layers, a hat and gloves, and carry a dry change of socks.
• Short days and closed areas. Daylight is still under eleven hours everywhere in the state, so start hikes early and pack a headlamp. Refuge sanctuaries such as the one at Bald Knob stay closed until the end of February.
• Winter tornadoes. Arkansas’s largest tornado outbreak came in January. Keep a way to receive warnings at night, even when it feels like winter outside.