Summer has officially overstayed its welcome. It started early across the United States, and even as the calendar flips toward autumn, the heat has no intention of leaving quietly. Forecasters at the US Climate Prediction Center are still seeing elevated odds for hotter-than-normal temperatures across much of the country through at least the end of September. The main culprits are familiar but no less unsettling: El Niño and climate change. Computer models are showing a pronounced ridge pattern, an atmospheric setup that acts like a lid on a pot, locking in sustained spells of unusually warm weather. This ridge is expected to deliver widespread unseasonable warmth, with the greatest odds of above-normal temperatures centered on the Upper Midwest and the Deep South. Some models suggest temperatures could run five to ten degrees Fahrenheit above normal for the latter half of September. That might not sound like a huge number, but when it comes to daily life, ten degrees can be the difference between a pleasant afternoon and a dangerous one. It also means pumpkin spice season is effectively on hold. The air outside still feels like July, the sun still has that late-summer bite, and the idea of cozy sweaters and crisp morning walks feels more like a fantasy than a forecast.
And this heat wave is not happening in a vacuum. It is arriving on the heels of the hottest summer in US history, a season that saw tens of thousands of heat records collapse like dominoes. Weather stations across the country logged nearly 44,000 record daytime highs and more than 53,000 record-high overnight minimum temperatures. Thousands more monthly and all-time heat records have fallen since the start of 2026. To put that in perspective, only about 21,500 low-temperature records fell during the same period, meaning there was roughly one cold record for every four heat records. Many of the records that shattered this year date back more than a century. Salt Lake City hit 109 degrees Fahrenheit on July 12, marking its hottest temperature ever recorded since record keeping began in 1874. Washington, DC, tied its all-time warmest overnight low of 84 degrees Fahrenheit on July 3, with daily observations stretching all the way back to 1871. The heat hasn’t relented just because September arrived. Even areas that usually escape nationwide heat waves have suffered. Much of Southern California endured excessive heat warnings during the second week of September as hot conditions and soupy air made Rodeo Drive feel more like Bourbon Street. It’s one thing when records fall, but another when century-old benchmarks are shattered by wide margins, and the misery stretches on week after week.
Why has fall started so hot? Climate change is far and away the primary driver. Rising global average temperatures have raised the baseline for extreme heat, which means very hot days are even steamier now than they would have been just a few decades ago. This trend has been especially noticeable at night. Many communities across the country have seen a dramatic increase in overnight temperatures during the warm months, driven by both rising temperatures and increasing humidity. The lack of nighttime relief is what makes heat waves particularly deadly. When the body never gets a chance to cool down, stress accumulates, and for many people, especially older adults and those without air conditioning, it becomes too much to handle. Climate change is also altering the upper-level patterns of the atmosphere in ways that make extreme heat more likely. Strong centers of high pressure aloft force air to sink toward the ground. As that air is compressed, it heats up, and when you combine that with intense sunshine and dry soils, temperatures get ratcheted well above normal. These ridges, often called heat domes, are becoming more common in a warming world. They settle over regions and stay put, deflecting cooler systems and turning what might have been a brief warm spell into a prolonged siege. This is not just a weather accident. It is the atmosphere responding to a planet that keeps absorbing more heat, and we are living inside that response.
So when will the heat end? Not as soon as many people would like. While overall highs for the remainder of September won’t be as extreme as they were in July, many areas will continue to endure summer-like heat. El Niño is also lurking in the background, and it’s a powerful player. This pattern, characterized by warmer-than-normal waters in the Pacific Ocean, affects weather patterns all around the world. We typically feel El Niño’s greatest effects during the cold months, because those abnormally warm ocean temperatures alter the jet stream, which in turn shapes autumn and winter weather. This year’s El Niño is shaping up to be potentially record-setting. Each El Niño is different, but looking at previous strong events gives forecasters a pretty good idea of what’s coming. A vast swath of the US is likely in for overall warmer-than-normal temperatures through the fall and winter. In other words, we are probably not done breaking heat records this year. If you were hoping for crisp October mornings, apple-picking weather, and the first excuse to light a fire in the fireplace, you may have to keep waiting. The atmosphere didn’t get the memo about the changing season, and it seems determined to keep the summer playlist going a little longer.
It’s easy to talk about weather patterns and climate statistics, but the real story is how this heat lands in people’s lives. It’s the parent dragging kids to soccer practice in 95-degree September heat, watching them wilt on the sideline. It’s the restaurant worker standing over a hot grill in a kitchen that never cools down, the mail carrier walking routes that feel like furnaces, the elderly neighbor checking the electric bill and deciding to suffer through the heat instead of turning on the air conditioning. The cultural markers of fall—pumpkin spice lattes, sweater weather, football tailgates, the first crisp morning of the season—feel completely out of sync when it’s still 90 degrees outside. The heat in Southern California was especially brutal because it wasn’t just hot; it was thick, humid air that made simple tasks feel exhausting. Rodeo Drive, known for glamour and open-air shopping, felt more like the heavy, sticky atmosphere of Bourbon Street in New Orleans. That’s the kind of heat that doesn’t just make you uncomfortable. It wears you down. It disrupts sleep, strains the heart, and makes outdoor work dangerous. The human body is remarkably resilient, but it has limits, and this summer’s heat has pushed many people right up against those limits. The fact that nights have stayed so warm is what makes this stretch especially hard to escape. There is no reprieve, no cool breeze at dusk, no moment to open the windows and let the house breathe.
Looking ahead, this hot autumn should be treated as a preview of what’s to come. It would be easy to dismiss it as a bad year, but the combination of climate change and El Niño means these kinds of extended heat events are likely to become more common. The seasons we grew up with are shifting before our eyes, and pretending otherwise only leaves us less prepared. There are things we can do to respond. We can expand access to cooling centers, make air conditioning more affordable, plant trees in urban heat islands, design homes and buildings that stay naturally cooler, and check on vulnerable neighbors during heat waves. More importantly, we can take the long-term threat seriously by reducing the emissions that are driving up global temperatures. But for now, the immediate advice is simple: don’t pack away the shorts just yet. Summer may be fading in the calendar, but in the air, it’s still very much alive. The heat will eventually break, but likely later and less dramatically than we’d like. Until then, we’ll be sweating our way through pumpkin spice season, watching the leaves change while cranking the air conditioning, and learning to live with a fall that feels a little more like summer with every passing year.
