Baker City Hits 61 Degrees, Warmest Day Since November 13

Baker City's warmest day in nearly three months slipped away almost as fast as it arrived. The Baker City Airport recorded a high of 61 degrees Sunday, March 8, surpassing the average high for that date by 13 degrees and ending a stretch of nearly four months without a reading above 60.

The 61-degree mark was the highest daily temperature since Nov. 13, 2025, when the thermometer reached 62. As Jayson Jacoby reported in the Baker City Herald, in a winter when snow and cold temperatures have been conspicuous by their absence, the mild weather Sunday might not have seemed as noteworthy as usual for the season. But it was the warmest day in almost three months in Baker City.

The reading cleared the March 8 average of 48 degrees with room to spare, though it fell short of the calendar-date record. That record stands at 65 degrees, set in 2005. March's all-time single-day record, drawn from climate data covering extremes back to 1928, sits considerably higher at 78 degrees.

The warmth proved brief. A cold front moved through early Monday, and the National Weather Service forecast a high of just 43 degrees at the Baker City Airport for March 9, an 18-degree plunge from Sunday's peak. Sunday is likely to be the warmest day for at least the next week, with cooler weather expected to persist and a chance of rain arriving by Wednesday, March 11.

The swing fits a pattern well-established in Baker City's climate record. The city sits in a cool semi-arid zone, classified as Köppen BSk, with some of the largest daily temperature swings in Oregon. That diurnal variation peaks in August, when the difference between daily highs and lows averages 39.3 degrees. The broader extremes are equally stark: the all-time high of 109 degrees was recorded on both Aug. 10, 2018 and Aug. 2, 2024, while the all-time low of minus-34 degrees dates to Dec. 23, 1983.