Meteorological spring hadn't even had a full month in the United States before the second major record-breaking heat wave of the year arrived.
Cities across at least 19 states were expected to approach or break record-highs Wednesday. Locations in at least 15 states will see the same on Thursday.
"Basically the entire U.S. is going to be hot," the National Weather Service's Weather Prediction Center's meteorologist Gregg Gallina told AP News on Monday. "The area of record temperatures is extremely large. That's the thing that's really bizarre."
Record highs were broken on March 24 in at least 10 western states. In many cases, the new record obliterated the old records. According to unofficial data so far from CoolWX, Junction, Texas, soared to 108 degrees Fahrenheit, breaking the city's previous daily record of 93 degrees Fahrenheit set in 1950 and surpassing the previous monthly record temperature by 10 degrees.
The expanding heat dome extends from a historic March heat wave that set several daily and monthly records during the month's third week. In February, a winter heat wave peaked on about Feb. 19, when Starr County, Texas, observed the highest winter temperature ever seen in the United States, at 106.
Prior to 2026, Phoenix had only hit 100 degrees during the month of March once on record, according to The Weather Channel. On March 24, the city had recorded five straight days of record-breaking highs of 100 degrees or hotter, per KTAR News.
Around 150 miles southwest of Phoenix, Yuma, Arizona, hit a scorching 112 degrees on March 20, according to Arizona Republic, setting a new record for the hottest March temperature on record in the U.S.
The second heat wave of 2026 started in the Southwest and will expand into the Midwest and Mississippi Valley regions on Wednesday and Thursday.
HeatRisk is a forecast tool developed by the National Weather Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It determines how stressful or dangerous the heat will feel for the body based on how hot it is, how unusual it is for your area, how long it sticks around, and how much relief you get overnight.
Around 743,000 people will experience moderate HeatRisk, Level 2 out of 4, on Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service.
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Save $1,000 this year 💸 That number will more than quadruple by Thursday, with 4.5 million people facing moderate HeatRisk. It will peak on Saturday with nearly 12 million people, primarily in the Southwest, under moderate HeatRisk.
Record hot temperatures have far outpaced record cold temperatures so far this year. The National Centers for Environmental Information reported that there have been nearly seven times as many record-high daily temperatures as record-lows over the past 30 days. Since the start of 2026, there have been over 13,000 record-high days across the United States compared to nearly 3,800 record lows.
2026 is already virtually guaranteed to rank among the planet's top warmest years on record. The NCEI February global climate report calculated a greater than 99.9% chance that 2026 will be a top-10 year and a 92.3% chance it will be a top-five year.
The World Meteorological Organization's alarming report on our overheating planet confirmed that 2015 to 2025 were the hottest 11 years on record.
While multiple factors contribute to hotter days, air pollution from industry, transportation, and energy production traps heat in the atmosphere, raising thermometer readings. This can exacerbate extreme weather conditions, such as deadly storms and brutal heatwaves.
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