As Houston heats up, will this September be as hot as last year’s?

Get ready for a toasty weekend, Houston.

A ridge of high atmospheric pressure above us will result in a sunny and hot stretch of weather. Long gone are those days earlier this month when we enjoyed a brief appetizer of fall. For the foreseeable future, you may want to opt for pumpkin spice beverages on ice.

The calendar says it’s mid-September, but it won’t necessarily feel like it this weekend, when temperatures will be about 5 degrees above normal. We’ll still be several degrees away from our record high of 100 degrees set in 2011 on Saturday and the record high of 98 degrees set in 1980 for Sunday, though.

If you’re hoping to squeeze in a 3-mile run around Memorial Park, you may want to get outside earlier than later. Temperatures Saturday and Sunday morning will start between 74 and 76 degrees in Houston and afternoon highs peak around 95 degrees.

Humidity-driven heat index values will reach the upper 90s and may even briefly touch 100 degrees. While it may be meteorological fall, it’s still important to practice heat safety this weekend by drinking plenty of water and wearing lightweight and light-colored clothing.

Temperatures will remain above normal into next week, though daily afternoon highs may fall a degree or two by midweek. The National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center says above-normal temperatures are favored through most of this month.

Last September was hot in Houston. Bush Intercontinental Airport, the city’s official climate observation site, recorded an average daily high temperature of 96.7 degrees in September 2023. That was the hottest September on record, based on average highs, and it beat out the previous record-holder, September 2011, by 1.2 degrees.

So far this month, the average daily high temperature at Bush Intercontinental is 89.2 degrees. We still have a lot of September left, so our average high will very likely be above that by month’s end. But for us to see a hotter September than last year, Houston would need a stretch of triple-digit heat that we’re just not likely to see this late in the season.