While the temperatures for the weekend will signal anything but the end of summer, the approaching Labor Day holiday is often considered the unofficial final weekend of the summer season before calendars and thoughts turn to fall.

The Labor Day holiday will be celebrated on Monday, Sept. 4 and will bring with it plenty of closures for the holiday observance. There will be no school that day and local city offices will be closed. Banks will be closed, there will be no mail delivery and businesses have the option of closing. County government offices and courts are closed as well. Escalon City Council, which regularly meets the first and third Mondays of the month, will not have a session on Sept. 4 due to the holiday observance.

National Weather Service forecasters are calling for excessive heat … with the forecast as of press time on Tuesday calling for triple digit heat to continue throughout the long holiday weekend. The forecast is for 111 degrees on Friday, Sept. 1; 110 for Saturday, 108 on Sunday and 107 on Monday, Sept. 4, the actual Labor Day holiday.

The weekend is traditionally a very busy one on the highways, especially with the Highway 120 corridor through the region and both I-5 and Highway 99; as a result, it will also be considered a Maximum Enforcement Period for regional law enforcement agencies. The MEP will start on Friday afternoon and continue until late Monday night. Additional patrols will be on the roadways, looking for speeders, distracted drivers and those driving under the influence. Authorities also remind everyone to buckle up.

Labor Day is observed on the first Monday in September and the day was set aside to honor the American labor movement and the contributions of workers across the country. It became a federal holiday in 1894.