The summer of 2026 may be remembered as the moment El Pasoans really felt the rising costs of climate change.

The average temperature in El Paso between June 1 and Aug. 31 will be 86.6 degrees, the fifth warmest on record for that period, according to the National Weather Service data and forecast. 

Like the planet as a whole, El Paso’s temperatures have been rising for decades as the climate has warmed. A phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect also plays a role. But since 2009, summer temperatures that previously had been freakish in El Paso have become the norm. (For record-keeping purposes, meteorologists and climatologists use June through August to represent summer trends in the northern hemisphere.)

Before 2009, El Paso had one summer (1994) where the average temperature exceeded 86 degrees. Since 2009, it’s happened eight times, including three of the last four years. Last summer was the exception – the average temperature was “only” 85.9 degrees.

This summer’s heat collided with a 13% rate increase from El Paso Electric, which took effect May 1, to send electric bills climbing. Social media feeds have been dominated since early July with angry and frustrated El Pasoans comparing electric bills.

One significant factor driving rising electric bills in the summer is that both days and nights in El Paso are getting much warmer.

READ MORE: Why your El Paso Electric bill is higher this summer — and what you can do to avoid big spikes

In the 109-year period from 1900 through 2008, El Paso had just nine summers with an average daytime high of 96.2 degrees or warmer. In the 18 years since 2009, it’s happened 16 times.

Between June 1 and Aug. 31, El Paso had 52 days where the high temperature exceeded 100 degrees. That’s the sixth most ever for those months, according to National Weather Service records that go back to the 1880s. As recently as 1984, El Paso had summers with as few as  one day above 100. (El Paso has occasional 100-degree days in May and September, but those aren’t included in this count.)

By the end of August, El Paso has had 87 consecutive days with a high temperature of 90 or higher, the fourth-longest such streak on record. The current long-range forecast calls for 90-plus days through mid-September. That means El Paso could break the record for consecutive 90-plus days, 106 in 2015.

The other big change is that the Chihuahuan Desert in and around El Paso no longer cools at night the way it has for centuries.

Between 1900 and 2008, El Paso had two years with an average overnight low summer temperature of 72 degrees or higher. In 16 of the 18 years since 2009, the average low has been above 72 degrees. That includes average lows above 75 degrees in 2023 and 2024.

Between 1900 and 1999, El Paso had 718 days where the temperature never dropped below 75 degrees. That’s an average of about one week a year. Since 2000, we’ve had 795 such days – an average of one month of every year, or four times more than in the previous century.

LEARN MORE: What’s changing on your El Paso Electric bill: rate hike, new fees and solar charges approved

For many El Pasoans, the warmer nights mean they have to run their cooling systems more hours each day, which drives up energy use – and bills.

One measure of the tie between temperature and energy demand is called cooling degree days. That’s the difference between the daily average temperature and 65 degrees. So a day with a high of 100 and a low of 74 has an average temperature of 87, which results in 22 cooling degree days for the date.

As the number of cooling degree days rises, the amount of energy required to cool a building increases. And that means your electric bills go up, as well.

In the 109 years between 1900 and 2008, El Paso had four summers of more than 1,750 cooling degree days. In the 18 years since 2009, every summer but 2021 has exceeded 1,750 cooling degree days. El Paso has surpassed 1,900 cooling degree days in each of the last four summers, a mark reached only once in the 20th century. 

The rising heat alone is responsible for hundreds of additional dollars to summer electric bills for El Pasoans.

With the assistance of Claude, an artificial intelligence program, El Paso Matters built an electric bill  model using what is known as a degree-day regression coefficient. That creates an estimate of electric bill costs under different temperature scenarios.

The model is for a 2,500-square-foot home, using current electric rates. The model looks at three different scenarios: the number of cooling degree days in the summer of 2026; the average number of cooling degree days in summers between 2000 and 2008, just before a sharp jump in El Paso’s summer temperatures; and the average number of summer cooling degree days a century ago, between the years 1920 and 1929. 

If this year had been similar to El Paso’s summers between 2000 and 2008, the hypothetical monthly bill would have been $74 lower than in this year’s heat – more than $220 for the summer. If we had experienced a summer similar to El Paso a century ago, the bills would be lower by almost $98 a month, or $294 for the summer.

The recent rate increase obviously exacerbates the financial pain for El Paso Electric customers. 

But a significant part of the rate increase can be linked to rising temperatures driven by climate change and urban heat islands. El Paso Electric and other utilities have to build systems to meet what is known as “peak demand,” and in El Paso that’s the summer. As the summers have heated, the amount of power generation necessary to meet summer demand has grown, even as El Paso’s population has seen minimal growth over the past 15 years.

To meet the demand, El Paso Electric built more generating capacity, including the Newman 6 natural gas plant in far Northeast El Paso. (Burning natural gas produces carbon dioxide and methane, which in turn warms the climate.)

The hundreds of millions of dollars in costs for that expansion, as well as a 9.4% profit margin for EPE, is then billed back to ratepayers under a plan approved by the Texas Public Utility Commission.

5:20 p.m. Monday, Aug. 31: This story has been updated to include reported data through Aug. 31, as well as data from updated forecasts.