Fall Reaches L.A. at 5:05 p.m. Forecasters Expect More Heat.

California logged its warmest start to any calendar year on record, and the fall outlook calls for more of the same.

Fall reaches Los Angeles at 5:05 p.m. Pacific on Tuesday, September 22, 2026, the moment the sun sits directly above the equator. That's 8:05 p.m. Eastern, and the equinox lands at the same instant everywhere on Earth, USA TODAY reported.

A timestamp doesn't cool a west-facing apartment. Through August, 2026 was the warmest year on record in the contiguous United States, and California was one of 10 states that logged its warmest start to a calendar year on record, Zach Labe, a climate scientist at Climate Central, told the outlet.

Searches for "first day of fall" spiked in California on Tuesday, the top rising query on the Google Trends board when it was pulled at 1:20 p.m. UTC.

The astronomical start isn't official in any legal sense. No agency or political body designates the day the season opens, the outlet reported. Meteorologists and climatologists had already closed summer out on August 31, the last day of the year's three hottest months.

Three weeks of meteorological fall are already on the books.

"Equinox" comes from the Latin for equal night, and day and night each run about 12 hours across most of the world on Tuesday — from Utqiagvik, Alaska, above the Arctic Circle, down to Wellington, New Zealand. The split isn't exact, because the atmosphere bends light and hands the day a little more than it's owed, which pushes the genuinely even date a few days out.

The three months ahead don't favor sweaters. Warmer-than-normal temperatures are likely to hold through fall, a combination of El Niño and climate change, Labe told the outlet. He put the record-breaking on the second of those: "It's human-caused climate change. That's what's driving the long-term trend."

August was the warmest on record worldwide for land and ocean temperatures combined, he said, and in the United States the month set records for average, maximum and minimum temperatures.

El Niño shifts heat out of the ocean and into the atmosphere, which is why those years tend to add a push to global temperatures. Federal forecasters expect this one to peak in late fall or early winter and to rank among the strongest on record.

That's not a guarantee of a rough season. "Every El Niño has its own flavor. Each one is different," Labe said.

Source: usatoday.com, retrieved September 22, 2026.