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    Phoenix’s early fall heat wave sets more weather records

    Vaseline Posted on

    Phoenix residents may have to hold off on ordering hot coffee, donning sweatshirts, and dusting off other fall gear for a little while longer. America’s hottest city is set to hit 110 degrees again by the end of this week. That’s 110 degrees in late September, if you’re keeping track.

    After the warmest summer on record, last week’s highs in the 90s were a welcome, if temporary, relief. But the National Weather Service is predicting daily temperatures of over 110 degrees through Sunday in an unexpected fall heat wave.

    “For Phoenix, we have a high forecast of 111 today, 110 tomorrow, 112 Friday, 113 Saturday and then 111 Sunday,” said Katherine Berislavich, meteorologist for the National Weather Service Phoenix.

    The normal, or 30-year average, high temperature for September 25 is 97 degrees, so 110 is definitely abnormal.

    Phoenix could also break another heat record on Wednesday: If the high temperature reaches 110 degrees at Sky Harbor International Airport, it would be the last 110-degree day ever recorded. The old record was Sept. 19, 2010. The most recent 110-degree day this year was Sept. 10.

    “We have a really abnormally strong high pressure system over us,” Berislavich said. “It’s just east of Colorado right now, but the center of that system is going to move back west and be overhead late this week and into the weekend.”

    A high pressure area, sometimes called a heat dome, is formed when air descends from the atmosphere and is compressed toward the ground. As the air descends, it becomes warmer, suppressing clouds and increasing its exposure to the sun.

    No rain to bring relief

    With the monsoon season ending on September 30th this year, there is virtually no chance of rain to provide relief from the scorching temperatures for the next few days. October and November are two of the driest months in Arizona.

    “The dew points are down, it’s drying up,” said Erinanne Saffell, Arizona’s state climatologist. “The dew point temperature helps us understand if there’s enough water in the atmosphere to produce a thunderstorm.”

    Berislavich expects the high’s highest temperatures to reach Phoenix on Friday and Saturday.

    Next week will cool down a bit, but it will still reach triple digits. It will stay around 110 degrees at the beginning of the week, but it will taper off towards the end of the week.

    If the triple-digit temperatures continue, Phoenix could break another heat record. This year, there were 122 days with a high temperature of 100 degrees or higher. If the fall stays warm, Phoenix could approach the record for most days above 100, which was 145 days in 2020.

    The last day with temperatures above 30 degrees is October 27, 2016, so Phoenix could break that record as well.

    Phoenix already broke the record for days over 110 degrees, with 61 before this week’s heat wave. The record could rise even higher with the current heat wave.

    “I’ll be watching closely to see if we get to 110 at the Phoenix weather station,” Saffell said. “That’s the highest 110 degrees we’ve ever seen at the weather station, and maybe even more.”

    Hayleigh Evans writes about extreme weather and related topics for The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. Email her with story tips at [email protected].

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