False spring has swarmed across the Central and Eastern U.S. in recent days, but the West is about to get in on the warmer weather once again.
A pattern change will cause the mercury to soar to record levels across the Southwest while the East will be riding quite the temperature roller coaster through next week.
Record Warmth Returns To West
Above average temperatures are going to dominate the West for the foreseeable future, threatening numerous records.
(MORE:March Outlook)
This record heat will cover much of southern and central California and stretch eastward into Texas. Some records could also be set as far north as Colorado. Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix and Albuquerque are all cities that could see daily records at least one day in the next week.
Daily temperatures will gradually climb each day. By early next week, places as far north as San Jose and Redding could see highs near 90 degrees.
For the Desert Southwest, this is looking to be a historic March heat wave.
Phoenix could see multiple days over 100 degrees. They typically don't reach temperatures this high until early May, and their earliest recorded 100 degrees was set in 1988 on March 26. This heat wave could beat this record by more than a week.
Some of these state all-time March records could be in jeopardy:
California's state record max for March is 107 degrees at Mecca on March 21, 2004
Arizona's state record max for March is 104 at Yuma on March 21, 2004
Nevada's state record max for March is 100 at Laughlin on March 17, 2007
Temperature Roller Coaster For The East
The East will see temperatures rise above average through the weekend before they get knocked down by a harsh reality check early next week.
As this pattern flip brings warmth to the Southwest, it will pull colder air southward from Canada beginning Monday in the Rockies and Plains, then pushing to the rest of the South and East on Tuesday. That could be followed by another cold front Friday into next Saturday.
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Temperatures will be up and down for much of the week ahead.
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Record Warmth So Far
Before the calendar even turned to March, Phoenix tied or set new daily record highsfour days in a rowall in the 90s.
One Deep South Texas reporting station recorded what may be thenation's hottest winter temperature.
(MORE:Record Warmest Winter In Parts Of The West)
And the records continued to fall as we kicked off thefirst month of meteorological spring.
During the first week of March, we saw many daily record highs tied or set across the Southern Plains and Southeast.
Then, this week, that warmth spread through much of the eastern half of the country.
Some notable daily high temperature records that were tied or broken on Monday occurred in South Bend, Indiana (73), Milwaukee, Wisconsin (70), Islip, New York (68) and Toledo, Ohio (73), among several others.
Tuesday, that record warmth continued to shift east where Central Park broke its daily high temperature with a high of 80. Other daily records that fell were Boston (Logan AP) with 73, Hartford, Connecticut (74) and Worcester, Massachusetts (67), among several others.
Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him onBluesky,X (formerly Twitter)andFacebook.