Remember that short stretch of the calendar recently when the daytime highs dropped down into the 70s and the nighttime lows into the low 50s? Hopefully you didn’t use that as the excuse to pack up your shorts and T-shirts and get out your woolens, because hot weather is returning in Fresno.

And there’s a tiny possibility that Tuesday’s high temperature could break the record of 102 degrees that was set in 1899, National Weather Service meteorologist Victor Proton told GV Wire on Monday morning.

Tuesday’s forecast now is for 101 degrees in Fresno, with a 3% chance it could get even hotter, he said.

Tuesday’s high is the only triple-digit day forecast within the next week as of now, which still will see daytime highs that are 7 to 10 degrees above normal, Proton said.

The upper-level high that is parked overhead is being held in place by two far-away weather systems, one over the Pacific and a tropical low developing over the southeast U.S., he said.

“What happens is, as it blocks up the upper-level flow and we’re stuck under an area where there’s very little mixing in the wind aloft. so it just warms up,” he said. “There’s no decrease in the upper-level heights, which kind of governs temperatures.”

A Warm Start to Autumn

Fresno’s last day of summer was Sunday, so the early days of fall here will be on the toasty side.

The highs and lows forecast for Fresno are 98 Monday with an overnight low of 71; 101 Tuesday and overnight low of 69; 96 Wednesday and low of 67; a high Thursday of 92 and low of 64; 95 Friday with a low of 66; 97 Saturday and overnight low of 65; and Sunday’s forecast high of 94.

And for those of you wondering whether you can scale back on your sprinkler usage over the next week: “We’ll have near-normal precipitation, which is basically no precipitation,” Proton said.