03/22/2026
🌡️ We haven’t seen a March like this since 1907.
😳 Let that sink in for a second.
So check this out… the last time we were THIS warm on March 20th/21st…
- Theodore Roosevelt was in the White House.
- The Wright Brothers had only flown at Kitty Hawk just four years before.
- The Model T hadn’t even been invented yet.
- Arkansas didn’t even have paved roads. (Okay does that count? I mean I grew up on a dirt road)
- There were only 45 states because Oklahoma wasn’t even a state yet. 🤯
- But! First National Bank of Fort Smith, one of the oldest banks in Arkansas, was already doing business. 😃
That record of 90° in 1907 stood for 119-years.
Today it’s gone.
It was 93° Friday.
And it’s not just Fort Smith.
Fayetteville has been keeping official climate records since 1892 (at UA)
The NWS site at Drake Field started record keeping in the 1940s, when it was built as a military base during WWII and later named after Dr. Noah Field Drake, he donated $3,500 but died before it was named after him. I thought that was neat piece of local history I didn’t know about.
So: That’s where “Drake Field” came from. Nifty local history, right?
In all that time, nothing came close. Until this weekend.
Records set decades ago are falling like dominoes.
“But wait… there’s more”…
That high pressure ridge is one of the strongest ever observed for March, with temps +20 to +30 degrees above normal across a HUGE part of the U.S.
It’s the same pattern that broke the all-time record for the hottest March temperature ever recorded anywhere in the USA.
It was 110°, near Martinez Lake, Arizona. This would be record breaking for April!
The “normal high” in Fort Smith today is 67°F. We are running nearly 25°+ degrees above that, same with Fayetteville.
One more thing to put 1907 in context...
The average annual salary in the United States that year was about $400.
There is no modern analog for a heat wave like this and what’s taking place. It’s literally like 2/3rds of the US experiencing record heat; not just one location.
The closest dates in the record books go back to a time before anyone alive today was born. 🤷🏼♂️
