Baker City Airport Hits 77°F on March 18, Breaking Multiple Records

Baker City Airport recorded a high of 77°F on March 18, the kind of reading that belongs on a July weather map, not one published two days before the vernal equinox. The temperature broke multiple local records for March, though the specific marks that fell were not enumerated in available weather summaries.

The 77°F reading landed squarely within a National Weather Service forecast that predicted temperatures climbing into the 70s each day from Tuesday, March 17, through Friday, March 20, before a weekend cooldown. The stretch mirrors what happened almost exactly two years ago: in March 2024, the Baker City Airport topped 70°F on five straight days from March 16 through March 20, a warm spell that itself broke three daily high temperature records.

The heat came after a winter that was already mild by Baker City standards. The coldest night at the airport this season was 3°F on Feb. 19, a relatively tame low for a region that can see deep freezes well into spring.

That mild winter is already drawing attention from Matt Hutchinson, the manager of the Baker Valley Vector Control District, whose job is to keep mosquito populations in check across a 200,000-acre territory covering most of Baker, Keating and Bowen valleys, including Baker City and Haines. "If the weather keeps up like it's been, I expect things to start earlier this year," Hutchinson said on March 16. "We'll start doing some surveying this week."

Hutchinson noted that some mosquito species can survive winter by sheltering in protected spots, and a mild season raises the odds they emerge earlier than usual. He flagged culex mosquitoes specifically as the ones that most concern his district, describing them as "the kind most likely to be infected with the West Nile virus." Unlike so-called "floodwater" mosquitoes, culex are "permanent water" mosquitoes that do not die each fall after the females lay their eggs, meaning overwintering populations can be ready to activate with the first sustained warmth. West Nile infections in the district have been quite rare, but the earlier the season starts, the longer the exposure window.

To put March's warmth in perspective: the all-time heat record at Baker City Airport belongs to Aug. 10, 2018, when the thermometer reached 109°F. The runner-up is 108°F, set the day before on Aug. 9, 2018. The summer of 2024 also pushed deep into the record books, with the airport hitting 102°F on July 21, breaking a record of 100°F set in 2005, and then reaching 105°F on July 22, surpassing a mark of 102°F that had stood since 1961.

March 18's 77°F is nowhere near those summer extremes, but arriving before the first day of spring, it signals that Baker County's warm season may be starting its run well ahead of schedule.