Mild May weather won't last long. A big warm-up is in the forecast
The Mother's Day forecast says the days of mild weather are numbered for much of the country.
Dinah Voyles PulverIf it's not storming where you are this weekend, you might want to fire up the grill for Mother's Day or eat outside. It could be a while before much of the country sees temperatures this nice again. Many locations soon will be saying goodbye to milder May days and hello to summer heat.
An 8- to 14-day outlook from the National Weather Service shows a ridge moving in from the west that is expected to bring "unseasonable warmth," to much of the country. The outlook's map looks like a large orange-red bullseye centered over Nebraska and ripples out across the U.S., with the exception of a strip along the East Coast and a slice of the Pacific Northwest.
"Heat will build across the western US this weekend into early next week," the National Weather Service posted on social media on Friday, May 8. "High temperatures could climb 20 to 30 degrees above normal for some locations. New daily high temperature records may be set."
Several states got a head start on summer-like temperatures in April, the weather service said. Nationally, April 2026 was the warmest April in 20 years and the third warmest on record, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.
The Ohio Valley saw its warmest April on record. Eight states in the region set statewide records for April: Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia and Virginia.
Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia broke records set in 1896, and exceeded their 20th century average April temperatures by as much as eight degrees. April ranked among the top 10 warmest for 16 other states.
In general, warmer than normal temperatures started early this year across much of the U.S. The average temperature for the first four months of the year was the warmest in the 132-year record, according to NOAA's report. That average – 44.8 degrees – was nearly six degrees above the long-term average.
In the short term, showers and thunderstorms are expected over the Central and Southern Plains on Saturday, May 10, then moving further south into the Southern Great Plains, Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas on Mother's Day, the weather service said. A cold front is forecast to move through the Great Lakes and mid-Atlantic that could produce thunderstorms and damaging winds.
The heat wave moving into the West is forecast to bring well-above average or even record-breaking temperatures, with highs reaching into the 100s in the valleys of Southern California and Arizona.
In the longer term, NOAA expects an El Niño to arrive and persist through the end of the year, which many weather experts fear may further escalate warmer-than-average temperatures for some regions.
(This story was updated because an earlier version included an inaccuracy.)
Dinah Voyles Pulver, a national correspondent for USA TODAY, covers climate change, weather, the environment and other news. Reach her at [email protected] or @dinahvp on Bluesky or X or dinahvp.77 on Signal.