The sun didn't just beat down on East Idaho Sunday — it rewrote the record books.

The Idaho Falls Airport, known as Fanning Field, hit 103 degrees Sunday, the hottest temperature ever recorded there since records began in mid-summer 1948. That's nearly eight decades of East Idaho summers and none of them got hotter than this one. The mark shatters the airport's previous all-time record of 102 degrees, set on June 25, 1988 — a record that stood for 38 years, broken in a single afternoon.

Idaho Falls wasn't alone. A volunteer weather observer in Rigby also logged his hottest temperature ever in that city Sunday: 103 degrees.

In Rexburg, the airport — keeping records since 1998 — blew past its own hottest mark, hitting 101 degrees and topping the previous record of 99, set just two summers ago on July 23, 2023.

And in Pocatello, the Regional Airport tied its hottest July 12 on record, matching a 102-degree mark last reached back in 2002.

The blistering heat comes as Extreme Heat Warnings and a Heat Advisory blanket all of East Idaho through 9 p.m. Monday, with the weather service warning that heat-related illness risk spikes sharply during extreme heat events like this one.

Forecasters are urging residents to drink plenty of fluids, stay in air-conditioned spaces, avoid direct sun, and check on relatives and neighbors — especially those most vulnerable to the heat.

The Extreme Heat Warnings and Heat Advisory went into effect on Saturday in East Idaho, when the mercury rose to the high 90s but no records were broken. That changed with Sunday's historic heat and the weather service is bracing for more record highs regionwide from Monday's scorching forecast.

Making matters worse: the region is already gripped by severe drought, with parched ground and low water levels offering little relief from the heat radiating back up from the earth. That combination — extreme heat layered on top of drought-parched land — also dramatically increases the risk of wildfires as vegetation dries out and becomes more likely to ignite and spread quickly.

But there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

Weather service forecasters say scattered showers and thunderstorms could roll into East Idaho starting Tuesday and continue into the weekend — a shot at badly needed rain after a summer that's offered precious little of it.

And the worst of the heat itself may already be behind us. The National Weather Service's 14-day outlook for East Idaho shows temperatures easing back into the mid-90s after Monday — still warmer than normal but nowhere near the record-shattering extremes of this weekend.

The heat made history this weekend across our region.

What comes next — a break in the drought — might matter even more.