Temperatures in Ontario just felt the hottest they have since 1936

This week's major heat wave across Ontario is shattering and matching all kinds of temperature records, including one that dates back to the Great Depression.

If you haven't already heard (or felt it by now), Ontario is currently grappling with a sweltering heat wave that's pushing daytime highs into the mid-to-high-30s and humidex values into the mid-40s.

According to Environment Canada, which has issued a yellow heat warning for Toronto along with the majority of the province, temperatures in the city could reach 38 C on Tuesday afternoon, which will feel closer to 45 C with the humidity.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the daytime high matched Toronto's hottest temperature of 2026, hitting the same sweltering 36 C recorded on Canada Day.

Elsewhere in the province, Sioux Lookout, located near Dryden, Ont., briefly held Canada's record for the highest temperature recorded in 2026 so far on Sunday, after reaching a scorching 38 C.

Soon after, Armstrong, a rural community located roughly three and a half hours north of Thunder Bay, beat this record, after temperatures reached 40.7 C on Monday afternoon, which was the hottest temperature recorded in Ontario since the 1936 heat wave, according to The Weather Network.

The heat wave, which took place exactly 90 years ago in the middle of the Great Depression and Dust Bowl of the 1930s, resulted in more than 5,000 deaths across North America.

"The 1936 heat wave did see even hotter temperatures, though that Armstrong couldn't quite reach. On July 11–12, 1936, Atikokan recorded a daytime high of 42.2°C. About an hour west, Fort Frances followed with the same reading the very next day on July 13, 1936," The Weather Network notes in its latest report.

Despite this, records continue to be broken, including in Atikokan, which set a new all-time July temperature record on Monday, with highs reaching 38.2 C, and beating out the previous record of 37 C in 2013.

On Monday, Thunder Bay also set a city record when maximum temperatures reached 39.5 C, beating out a previous record set on July 30, 1975, when temperatures reached 37.2 C.

According to The Weather Network, since records began at Pearson Airport back in 1937, the temperature in the city has only surpassed 37 C on six occasions, including once on Aug. 25, 1948, when temperatures reached an all-time record of 38.3 C.