It's officially the hottest March ever for San Diego. Here's where records were broken
The average high temperature for the month of March reached 75 degrees at San Diego International Airport, making this officially the hottest March ever, according to records dating back to 1875.
NBC 7 Meteorologist Greg Bledsoe said the average high temperature crossed the threshold in the first 18 days of the month.
The heat peaked on Friday, with seven locations in San Diego County breaking their monthly records, the National Weather Service’s preliminary report shows. That includes Escondido (101), Ramona (98), El Cajon (101), Lake Cuyamaca (88), Campo (100) and Borrego (106) — all of which shattered their monthly records just a day earlier, too. Alpine (99) broke the monthly record it set on Tuesday. Nine places broke their daily records, including Vista and Chula Vista.
On Thursday, nearly 10 locations broke their daily records, including Oceanside Harbor, Escondido, Ramona, Alpine and El Cajon. Borrego (105) and Palomar Mountain (83) set new monthly records, both by one degree, after shattering them just one day earlier; on Wednesday, Borrego broke its record from March 1988, and Palomar Mountain broke its record from March 1966.
Two other locations broke their monthly record on Wednesday: Lake Cuyamaca (84) broke its record from March 1931 and Campo (96) broke its record from March 1997. Daily record-breaking temperatures were recorded on Wednesday in nearly a dozen places, such as San Diego and Vista.
Broken temperature records
Here’s when and where daily temperature records were broken during this winter heat wave.
March 20
March 19
March 18
March 17
March 16
Source: National Weather Service
Graphic: Tejal Wakchoure / NBC
San Diego County has recorded 10 days of tied or broken temperature records since March 1, a trend expected to continue as winter transitions into spring.
Fernando De Salas, an Associate Professor of Geography at San Diego State University, said the pattern reflects a broader climate trend.
“We should expect longer and more intense heat waves in the future, for sure,” De Salas said.
De Salas pointed to decades of data showing rising temperatures across California.
“So, if you look at the record from the 1950s to 2020, we’ve seen longer heat waves in California, more intense heat waves. We’ve seen also nighttime temperatures climbing and also temperatures along the coast also warming as well,” De Salas said.
March’s heat would have been virtually impossible without human-caused climate change, according to a report Friday by World Weather Attribution, an international group of scientists who study the causes of extreme weather events.
More than a dozen scientists, meteorologists and disaster experts queried by The Associated Press put the March heat wave in a kind of ultra-extreme classification with such events as the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat wave, the 2022 Pakistan floods and killer hurricanes Helene, Harvey and Sandy.
The United States is breaking 77% more hot weather records now than in the 1970s and 19% more than the 2010s, according to an AP analysis of NOAA records. In the United States, the number and average cost of inflation-adjusted billion-dollar weather disasters in the last couple years is twice as high as just 10 years ago and nearly four times higher than 30 years ago, according to records kept by NOAA and Climate Central, a nonprofit group of scientists and communicators who research and report on climate change.
The heat is sticking around through the start of the weekend, raising the possibility of more record temperatures, Bledsoe said. Temperatures will cool slightly by Sunday and the early part of next week, but it’s still going to be very warm.
This month is the third-warmest start to March ever for San Diego. It’s also tied for the second driest — and there’s still no rain in the forecast. San Diego might go through the entire month without recording even 0.01″ of rain, which has only happened six other times since the late 1800s.
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