Historic March Heat Wave Headed For Southwest, California With Numerous Records Threatened; East Returns To Average

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

Say Hello To Reality In The East

While the East saw well above average temperatures this week so far, temperatures will soon return to average with highs in the 40s, 50s and 60s.

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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Record Warmth So Far

Before the calendar even turned to March, Phoenix tied or set new daily record highs four days in a rowall in the 90s.

One Deep South Texas reporting station recorded what may be the nation's hottest winter temperature.

(MORE: Record Warmest Winter In Parts Of The West)

And the records continued to fall as we kicked off the first 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 on Bluesky, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.