Saharan Heat Forecast To Bring Thunderstorms And Dust To Europe

2025-06-12 05:02:16

(MENAFN- Live Mint) (Bloomberg) -- The blast of North African heat enveloping parts of Europe this week will bring powerful thunderstorms and Saharan sand in its wake.

Amber storm alerts have been issued for Castile and Leon in Spain, along with northern Portugal on Wednesday, as the heat breaks over Iberia. Further north, the highest temperatures for the UK and France are likely to come on Friday. Highs will climb to 36C (97F) in Rome, with London reaching 27C and Paris 31C.

The heat will push moisture high into the atmosphere, building storm clouds that could bring torrential rain, hail and lightning to France and the UK over the coming days. The storms could dump to 40 millimeters (1.6 inches) of rain - more than half the total for June last year - in a few hours, according to the UK Met Office.

“These storms are going to have to be high energy,” Alex Deakin, a meteorologist with the UK Met Office said in a forecast briefing.“They will drop a lot of rain in a short space of time.”

Those storms are also expected to collect a strong plume of dust off the Sahara Desert, coating windows and cars, and potentially disrupting solar power generation, according to weather analytics firm MetDesk.

The heat comes after a period of unsettled and wet weather in northwest Europe wasn't sufficient to offset an unusually warm and dry spring. Precipitation and soil moisture in the region were at the lowest levels in decades, according to a new analysis from the Copernicus satellite program.

Spring river flows across Europe were the lowest since 1992, but the south and parts of northwestern Russia saw an unusually wet March to May period, the data show. Temperatures showed a similar divide this spring, with warmer-than-normal conditions across western Europe and cooler weather in the east.

While May 2025 was 0.29C below the long-term norm in Europe, the Copernicus analysis found global average temperature were 0.59C above normal - the second-highest ever recorded and 1.4C above pre-industrial averages.

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