March 2026 was the hottest March on record in the DFW area. The average temperature was 67.6-degrees Fahrenheit with the hottest temperature reaching 95-degrees on March 22. This is causing many people to worry even hotter temperatures could arrive by summer.
Retired Fox-4 Meteorologist Evan Andrews says people should not be too concerned. “The pattern that caused all the warm-to-hot weather in March has moved on. That’s gone. April is reverting to a normal April around here,” said Andrews.
The hot weather was caused by unusual weather patterns that have now returned to their normal behavior.
“Typically, the jet stream, which is a lot further to the south this time of year, ended up going into the northern United States and we had a big ridge of high pressure sitting over us,” said Andrews. “We had sinking air over us, and sinking air gives you lots of sunshine and hot temperatures and it was that way for most of the central United States.”
This only affected the central US though. On the East coast, they still had cool temperatures.
Looking forward to summer, Andrews warned not to put too much into weather predictions, as they are often not much more than a gamble.
“You have computers that make perfect equations. Computers don’t make mistakes, people do. So, when you put this information into these computers, it’s always missing a little something,” he said. “It can’t see every little step that’s out there in the universe. So little errors get input into the computers.”
He went on to explain that over time, these errors compound, making the predictions less accurate the farther out they go, likening it to a game of telephone.
“Someone gives you a sentence and tells you to pass it to the next person, they pass on a sentence to the next person. Maybe the third person. They pass on one error,” Andrews said. “The further it goes down the line, somebody else introduces another error. The more errors are likely as you go farther down the line and that’s kind of how computer programs with weather work.”
Due to the increased risk of inaccuracy, Andrews encouraged people not to put too much weight on predictions the further out they go.
“What you are doing is you are playing odds,” said Andrews. “That’s, to me, what climate forecasting is. “For example, you look at ‘what did a hot March mean for weather?’ And then you go look at all the summers that follow and maybe six of them were hotter and dryer than normal and three of them were cooler and wetter than normal and one of them was normal. So, what do you do if you’re someone who’s a betting person? What do you bet on?”
At this time last year, there were predictions that summer 2025 was going to be very hot. However, by the time the summer arrived, it was very mild, with temperatures barely breaking into the triple digits, which is unusual for the DFW area.
“In the spring of last year [2025], like around this time, everybody started making summer predictions and the summer predictions for last year were for hot and dry and a drought. That was the summer prediction for last year; hot, dry. We’re going to be in trouble. What happened? We got a ton of rainfall in May and June and it even lasted into July,” said Andrews. “It was one of the grossest, most humid summers I can remember. But in terms of triple digit temperatures, we barely had triple digits at all.”
He used the example of last summer to reiterate that a prediction is just that: a prediction. It does not necessarily mean that the weather is going to follow what it is expected to do.
According to Andrews, a better prediction of summer weather is what happens in late spring, during April, May and even going into June.
“I mean, already April’s starting to look pretty wet, at least it is on the forecast. If this lasts into May and June, the odds of having an extremely hot summer would, in my opinion, go down,” said Andrews. “It’s more of what happens in April, May and early June than what happens in March.”
While March 2026 was the hottest March in DFW history, those in the area should not yet grow concerned about the summer weather yet. Most likely, it is not indicator of what the weather will be like three months from now.
