It is fitting that hot weather is building into the region this week because the time right after the 4th of July has been the start of two of the area’s most notorious heat waves.
Following the warmest June month on record in 1988, the two days after July 4 that year are among the hottest days in the past several decades. The temperature reached 106 degrees in Fargo on the July 5, and 102 on the July 6 despite a brief thundershower at midday.
But the worst heat wave in our history was in 1936. That year, it was 90 on the July 4 and then 95 on the July 5. The following day, the temperature officially reached 114 degrees, which remains the high temperature record for Fargo Moorhead. (115 was recorded at Hector Field in Fargo, but the official readings were taken back then at the Moorhead Federal Building, now the Rourke Museum.) The next eight days were all at least 103 degrees
