Labor Day 2026 Heat Wave: The Hottest Labor Day on Record, City by City — and Which Records Fall This Weekend

Across 21 Plains, Midwest and Mid-South cities, the hottest Labor Day in 56 years of NOAA daily records (1970–2025) was September 4, 2000, when Dallas–Fort Worth hit 111°F, Shreveport 107.9°F, and Fort Smith and Oklahoma City 105.9°F — eight of the 21 cities reached 100°F that day. Labor Day 2026 is not forecast to top that. But it doesn't have to, because the record books are written city by city and date by date — and on that scoreboard, this weekend is very much in play.

The National Weather Service forecast issued September 3 puts Joplin, MO at 101°F on Labor Day, above its hottest Labor Day since 1970 (100.9°F in 1998). Springfield, MO at 98°F would tie its 1998 mark. Little Rock's 103°F on Sunday would beat the September 6 record of 102°F set only three years ago. In all, 9 of the 21 cities have a daily record high within reach on at least one day of the holiday weekend: 10 outright breaks and 5 ties if the forecast verifies.

We measured it the way we measure every heat event: by pulling each city's daily high from its primary long-record airport station in our NOAA records database, finding the actual first Monday of September for every year since 1970, and stacking the 2026 forecast against every prior reading on the same calendar date. The full tables are below; a city-by-city look at typical Labor Day weather is on our holiday page.

This isn't a forecast bust waiting to happen. The ridge responsible has been sitting on the southern Plains since the last days of August, and our daily records tracker has been logging the damage: 185 daily record highs at US stations from August 28 through September 1, with Kansas alone posting 13 on August 30 and 14 on August 31. Wichita's Eisenhower Airport hit 105.9°F on August 30, past the 104°F date record from 1990. Salina reached 107°F the same day; Ashland, KS and Billings, OK hit 107°F on the 31st. Nacogdoches, TX touched 107.9°F on August 30, breaking a mark that had stood since 2000.

The pattern is a textbook heat dome: a strong upper-level ridge centered over Oklahoma and Kansas, sinking air that warms as it compresses, clear skies, and soil that has been baking for weeks. The northern edge of the ridge is where the weekend's only real relief lives — a front drops Minneapolis from 90°F Saturday to 82°F by Labor Day, and Chicago from 84°F to 81°F. Everyone south of Interstate 80 stays under the dome through Monday, and the forecast keeps most of Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas in the upper 90s into the middle of next week.

Look down the “Hottest LD Weekend” column and one year keeps repeating. The Labor Day weekend of September 2–4, 2000 is the reigning champion in 14 of our 21 cities. Saturday, September 2, 2000 was the day for most of them: Topeka and Fort Smith 109°F, Wichita and Oklahoma City 107.9°F, Tulsa 107°F, Kansas City and Lincoln 105.9°F, Joplin 105°F, Omaha 102°F. Sunday brought 109°F to Shreveport and 104°F to Little Rock. Then the holiday itself, Monday the 4th, delivered the single hottest Labor Day reading in the dataset: 111°F at Dallas–Fort Worth, with Shreveport at 107.9°F and eight cities at or above 100°F.

Three other holidays fill in the rest of the table:

• Labor Day 2023 (September 4) — the hottest on average. A 96.9°F mean high across all 21 cities, with 17 of them at 95°F or hotter. It was the northern tier's holiday: Minneapolis 98°F and Des Moines 95°F set their all-time Labor Day marks, Sioux Falls and Topeka hit 100°F, and Little Rock's 102°F two days later is the September 6 record this weekend is chasing.
• Labor Day 2012 (September 3) — seven cities at 100°F. Wichita's 105.9°F is still its hottest Labor Day; Fort Smith 105°F, Tulsa and Oklahoma City 104°F, Dallas–Fort Worth 100.9°F, Joplin and Topeka 100°F.
• Labor Day 1998 (September 7) — the Ozarks' hottest. Tulsa 105°F (tying 1978), Little Rock and Fort Smith 102°F, Joplin 100.9°F and Springfield 98°F — the two Missouri records this weekend's forecast would tie or beat.

For contrast: last Labor Day, September 1, 2025, Kansas City and Topeka topped out at 71°F, Omaha at 66.9°F and Springfield at 77°F. Twelve months later the same cities are forecast 20 to 30 degrees warmer.

A forecast a degree over a record is a coin flip, not a headline, so read these as the places to watch rather than a done deal. Still, the geography is telling: the cities at risk are not the hottest ones. They are the ones whose record books have room.

• Joplin, MO — hottest Labor Day in 56 years. 101°F on Monday tops the 100.9°F of Labor Day 1998, and Sunday's 101°F beats the September 6 record (100°F, 1990). Joplin has reached 100°F on Labor Day three times (1998, 2000 and 2012); this would be the fourth, and the first in 14 years.
• Springfield, MO — three shots in three days. 99°F Saturday and Sunday both clear the 98.9°F date records from 1990 and 1998, and 98°F on Monday ties the hottest Labor Day in Springfield's record (1998). Springfield has never recorded 100°F on Labor Day.
• Little Rock, AR — 103°F Sunday. That beats the September 6 record of 102°F set in 2023, and Saturday's 101°F edges the 100.9°F September 5 mark from 1998. The National Weather Service's longer books, which reach back to the 1800s, list a 103°F daily record from 1947 — so by the official count this would be a tie of an 80-year-old record, and by our 1970-onward record an outright break.
• Memphis, TN — 101°F Sunday. Past the 100.9°F September 6 record from 1990; Saturday's 100°F ties the date record shared by 1980 and 1990.
• Fort Smith, AR — the hottest forecast, and only ties. 105°F Sunday and 104°F Monday equal the 2012 date records exactly. Fort Smith's problem is its own history: five 100°F Labor Days, a 105.9°F holiday in 2000 and 109°F on both the Saturday and Sunday of that same weekend.
• Saturday specials. Topeka's 99°F is two full degrees past a September 5 record of 96.9°F that 1990, 2002 and 2023 all reached and none beat. Omaha's 97°F clears 96.9°F from 1990, Columbia's 99°F clears 98°F from 1990, and Wichita's 102°F ties 1985. On Friday the 4th, St. Louis's forecast 100°F would break a 98.9°F record from 1990 and Nashville's 98°F would top 96.9°F (1990 and 2019).

And the cities that will be hot but record-proof: Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Dallas–Fort Worth and Shreveport all sit roughly 2 to 10 degrees below date records set in 1990, 1998, 2012 and 2023. Kansas City's story is duration rather than a peak — 96°F to 99°F every day from Friday through Wednesday, roughly 11°F above normal, but short of its 100°F Labor Day (2002) and nowhere near the 105.9°F of September 2, 2000. Its September 5–7 date records (98.9°F, 100.9°F and 96.9°F) are out of reach by roughly one to five degrees.

Across the same 21 cities, the average Labor Day high was 84.6°F in 1970–1989 and 87.1°F in 2006–2025 — a 2.5°F rise, with 20 of the 21 cities warmer in the recent period (Omaha is the lone exception, essentially flat). The biggest gains are in the Ozarks and the eastern Plains: St. Louis is up 5.1°F on the holiday, Joplin 5.0°F, Wichita 4.1°F, Tulsa 3.9°F and Springfield 3.6°F. The Gulf-side cities that were already hot, Dallas and Shreveport, moved less than a degree and a half.

Extremes cluster rather than trend: the 45 Labor Day readings of 100°F or more since 1970 came 11 in the 1970s, 2 in the 1980s, 10 in the 1990s, 9 in the 2000s, 9 in the 2010s and 4 so far this decade. What has changed is the floor. A ridge that would have produced a 92°F holiday in 1985 now produces 97°F, which is exactly what this weekend looks like across Kansas and Missouri: not a freak reading, just a normal heat dome starting from a warmer baseline. Our city-by-city summer warming analysis and the running tally of a record-warm 2026 show the same shape.

Curious what your own town did on any Labor Day? Our historical weather lookup returns the daily high and low for any US ZIP code back to 1970 — enter September 7 and see how 2026 stacks up where you live.