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. Extremely high temperatures that will no longer 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 storms will gain ground and intensity, mainly in the pre-coastal area, inland and in the Pyrenees. But between Sunday and Monday these showers may reach the coast more easily. No episode of such extreme heat is foreseen in the medium term and at 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 in the interior and the Pyrenees, with a more abrupt decrease particularly in the west. Extreme values from Friday will no longer be reached, when there were many highs of 30°C to 35°C, far from the more than 40°C of recent days. It is on the coast where this decrease will be most difficult to notice, as it will still feel muggy.

A change in thermometers that will also be accompanied by more instability. The morning will still be calm and quite sunny. But clouds will begin to grow with the passage of hours 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 reach pre-coastal areas, while the coast will remain more on the sidelines of this situation. 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 areas of the northeast. There will also be storms in the Ports area and inland Mallorca, Castellón, and Valencia.

All this with temperatures that could still drop a little more, both day and night. A more pleasant night overall and cool in mountain 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 in the middle of the week temporarily. But no extreme heat episode like in the past few days is foreseen. In fact, by the end of next week, temperatures could drop more significantly and normalize completely, 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 sky's condition, showers will continue to occur in some regions. On Monday, instability could move to the regions of Barcelona and Girona, while from Thursday onwards, we might have a more extensive spell of storms and showers. We will be monitoring everything, but it seems that the second half of August will begin to leave the worst part of summer behind.

New heat records

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

Furthermore, on Thursday a new record for sea heat was recorded 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 place until now from August 2024. An exceptional figure considering that it is the oldest series of sea water records in the Mediterranean. It is a value five degrees above the average.