As its final days wind down, weather in March 2026 has been one for the record books. It showed why old sayings endure and rivaled college basketball for "March Madness."
True to the proverb, the month came "in like a lion," and later echoed Shakespeare's warning to "beware the ides of March."
Relentless, record-breaking heat persisted in the West. Powerful storms and bouts of polar air blew through the Central and Eastern U.S., bringing extreme swings in temperature within hours. Hawaii endured flooding rains in a string of kona lows.
It may come as a surprise, but these weather systems also illustrate how connected we are by larger patterns that move around in our atmosphere.
Though we tend to focus on what's going on in our own regions, "all the global patterns are connected through jet stream interactions and waves around the planet," said Daniel McEvoy, a research scientist with the Western Regional Climate Center. "The patterns kind of feed off each other and drive weather across the continent."
