Change of weather on the weekend: more showers and goodbye to extreme heat

BarcelonaThis Friday the atmosphere is very suffocating. The extreme heat peak is leaving many highs of 35°C to 40°C even in coastal areas, but in Ponent and the Ebro valley these figures have been exceeded. Highlights include 41.5°C in El Canós (Segarra), 41.3°C in Vinebre (Ribera d'Ebre) or 41°C in Lleida and Alcarràs (Segrià) and in Tàrrega (Urgell). They have also approached 40°C on the Barcelona pre-coast. These extremely high temperatures will not be repeated in the coming days. This August 15th weekend the thermometers will drop. We are coming from so high that the summer heat will continue, but it will be less intense and far from 40°C. All this with an increase in instability. Showers and thunderstorms will gain ground and intensity, mainly in the pre-coast, inland and in the Pyrenees. But these downpours could reach some coastal points. No such extreme heat episode is foreseen in the medium term and by the end of next week the atmosphere will be much more bearable.

Saturday: temperatures down and thunderstorms

The weekend will still start with nighttime heat and very marked mugginess near the sea, especially on the central and southern coast. Meteocat still maintains alerts activated in this regard in these areas until Sunday.

However, maximum temperatures will clearly drop, especially inland and in the Pyrenees, with a sharper decrease particularly in western Catalonia. Extreme values from Friday will no longer be reached, when there were many maximums of 30°C to 35°C, far from the more than 40°C of recent days. It will be on the coast where this decrease will be most difficult to notice, as mugginess will still be felt.

A change in thermometers that will also be accompanied by more instability. The morning will still be calm and quite sunny. But clouds will start to build up as the hours go by in mountain and inland areas, without ruling out some initial local showers. It will be in the afternoon when showers and storms will gain ground and strength. They can fall irregularly in almost any part of the interior, Pyrenees and Pre-Pyrenees, and also in the Ports area.

They will also arrive in pre-coastal areas, while the coast will remain more on the sidelines of this situation initially. However, in the afternoon, strong storms may also reach the southern coast. Thunderstorms can be intense and be accompanied by hail, sleet or strong winds, which is why Meteocat has activated the alert for heavy rain in many counties.

Sunday: rough weather

The weather will remain unstable on Sunday, with a variable and changing sky overall. In the morning, the first showers will fall in the north of the country, and in the afternoon, showers and thunderstorms will repeat, this time mainly in the northern half of the country, even reaching coastal stretches of the northeast. There will also be storms in the Ports area and in the interior of Mallorca, Castellón, and Valencia.

All this with temperatures that could still drop a little more, both day and night. A more pleasant night atmosphere overall and cool in mountainous areas, but still muggy near the sea. The maximums will be typical of summer, but with much more moderate heat than in previous days.

No great heatwaves in sight

Next week, thermometers will experience some ups and downs, even with intense heat mid-week on a temporary basis. But no extreme heat episode like in recent days is expected. In fact, by the end of next week, temperatures could drop more significantly and fully normalize, which hasn't happened for almost the entire summer. This would translate into bearable heat during the day and mild or cool nights.

Regarding the state of the sky, showers will repeatedly occur in some regions. On Monday, instability could move to the regions of Barcelona and Girona, while from Thursday onwards we could have a more extensive spell of storms and downpours. We will keep track of all this, but it seems that the second half of August will begin to leave the worst part of the summer behind.

New heat records

This summer is being historic and exceptional in terms of heat, and in Catalonia, records continue to be broken. In this regard, Friday was the eighteenth day this year that somewhere in the country has reached 40°C, a new record for our region of days in a year reaching this extreme figure, beating the record registered last year. The record for tropical nights – above 25°C – has also been broken in the Raval neighborhood of Barcelona, a total of 47 by Friday already this 2026, leaving behind the record of 45 tropical nights from 2022.

Furthermore, on Thursday, a new record for marine heat was registered in L'Estartit, in Baix Empordà. According to observer Josep Pascual, the sea surface temperature one mile from the Medes Islands reached 27.77°C, an unprecedented record since Pascual began taking measurements in 1974 and surpassing the record in effect until now from August 2024. An exceptional figure considering that it is the oldest series of sea water records in the Mediterranean. This is a value five degrees above the average.