First Alert Weather Extra: More on the European heatwave

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]Now, Connecticut's only all weather show. This is First Alert Weather Extra.

[00:00:07]>> Thank you everyone for joining us. I'm Aaron Connelly joined by Chief Meteorologist Mark Dixon and meteorologist Mike Slafer. Mark, it's good to have you back.

[00:00:15]>> Good to be back. And a nice change from yesterday, right? It was very warm and very humid, too. Or more humid than it is today.

[00:00:20]>> Yeah, it's certainly comfortable out there right now. Uh but we have some pretty big changes in store.

[00:00:25]>> Yeah. And you know what? For the upcoming weekend, it's uh Saturday. our focus of our next big thing, which we'll talk about in just a moment. It is going to be notably cooler and also a bit on the windy side. But uh today across Connecticut, we have seen temperatures peak uh in the low and mid70s across the state. And during the afternoon, even back say around the noon hour, uh even late morning, some isolated showers were beginning to develop with the daytime heating. Uh you can see what's left of those showers. We're tracking with the state's only live radar taking into southeast Connecticut. Little bit of a shower, quick downpour here moving through North Stonington heading toward Westerly, Rhode Island. Otherwise, the shower activity that was once up along Route Two near Chester has been diminishing. So, really wrapping up there. So, uh with the daytime heating again, those showers becoming a bit more numerous here across the New England and the last few frames of this animation and this is a six-hour loop showing how now that we've passed peak heating, the showers are not only diminishing, but the cloud cover also eroding. So that will continue to take place as the evening moves forward in time. So yard goats first pitch just about a half hour from now. Upper 60s by the time the game wraps up, lower 60s. So wherever your evening plans may take you, the weather will be very comfortable. A little bit on the breezy side, but otherwise we should be dry. And rain chances over the next 24 hours. Uh dry overnight, dry into tomorrow morning. little bit of an uptick as we get into tomorrow afternoon, more so tomorrow evening into tomorrow night as the disturbance drops out of Canada and that will bring us that chance for some showers. So, here you can see on First Alert Futurecast what's left of the cloud cover wraps up tonight and under a mainly clear sky tonight. Clouds start to uh become more numerous by say the afternoon tomorrow.

[00:02:04]And you see those greens beginning to pop up late afternoon through the evening commute 9:00 even off to our north say north of the Mass Pike. You can see those yellows uh and some oranges popping up. So, it is tomorrow night that we'll probably see the best chance for some showers before this disturbance exits and it's going to bring in some cooler and windy weather again for uh Saturday, this upcoming weekend. So, temps tomorrow for our Friday, we're up between 70 and 75 uh by tomorrow afternoon. So, pretty close to what's considered typical or average for this time of year. So, again, our next big thing, Saturday, temperatures running 10 to 15 degrees below average.

[00:02:38]And winds, they're going to be gusting at times up to perhaps over 30 miles an hour. And there is a chance for a couple lingering isolated showers from what moves through tomorrow night and especially with the heating of the afternoon on Saturday. But most of the time for many communities, we will remain dry. So by no means a wash out.

[00:02:54]For much more on the showers that have been moving through Connecticut today, we'll continue our team coverage now with Mike Slifer. Mark, we uh saw some showers pass through the state earlier today, which is what we expected. Had that daytime heating, a bit of instability in the atmosphere letting those showers pop up and perhaps you were tracking them with the free First Alert weather app. If you want an interactive radar just like this, you can get it with the free First Alert weather app. Great thing to have on days like today, it'll be great to have on Saturday, too. But perhaps you noticed that it looked like the radar was showing showers overhead. This was actually a bit of a common theme as these showers started getting going earlier today. And there's a reason for that. It's something called Verg. So, in a more traditional sense, as we bring up our our patch of ground here, our clouds, when we see the radar returns, that means that there's something falling from the sky. In this case, we're talking about rain falling from the clouds, reaching the ground, precipitation. Uh, this, of course, was something that some towns did experience today. Uh, the rain that moved through was light to moderate, wasn't all that heavy, and it certainly wasn't all that impactful, especially since these showers were very quick moving. But if you back the clock up a little bit more, we're talking late morning here approaching lunchtime. We started to see these radar returns, but it took a minute for the rain to actually reach the ground. As Mark mentioned, not nearly as muggy as it was yesterday.

[00:04:16]That drier air at the surface, making all the rain evaporate before it ever reached the ground. This is something that we call verga where the rain falls out of the clouds and it starts to approach the ground falling into that layer of dry air in the atmosphere but it dries up before it ever reaches the ground. And this actually uh is something that happens fairly frequently. You need to get the ground or rather you need the air to saturate from the cloud to the ground level. So those first raindrops fall out of the cloud. They evaporate. they dry up, but it that helps to add moisture to the air. It helps to saturate the air a bit and eventually as that saturation process continues, we end up with the rain reaching the ground or in this case, uh, you know, we're just talking about preip in general. But we certainly dealt with some showers today and we will deal with some showers as we head into the weekend, too. Coming up a little bit later in our First Alert Weather Extra, the lack of showers and how the drought monitor has evolved.

[00:05:14]That's still to come.

[00:05:16]>> Mike, thank you so much. A record-breaking spring heat wave continues overseas in Western Europe.

[00:05:21]The hot weather arrived earlier than normal this year. Meteorologist Tyler Hughes has a look at what's going on.

[00:05:28]>> Parts of Europe are dealing with a major heat wave this week, shattering temperature records and leaving millions of people looking for ways to cool off.

[00:05:36]The heat peaked earlier this week with temperatures in countries like the UK, France, Spain, and Italy reaching well into the 90s. in both the UK and France actually set new records for the highest May temperature ever recorded there.

[00:05:51]Now, the video you're seeing on your screen now is from Rome, where temperatures soared into the upper 80s and low 90s in the Italian capital. Even Pope Leo had to rush to the aid of a priest who fainted while waiting to shake hands with him after his audience in St. Peter Square yesterday. The pontiff kneeling down by his side as medical staff from the Vatican cared for him. The priest later told Vatican News that he was standing in the sun for over 3 hours, but he was checked out by paramedics and he's doing just fine now.

[00:06:21]So, let's talk a little bit about the temperature records that have been set.

[00:06:24]This animation is a loop of temperature records that have been challenged or broken in the last week across Europe.

[00:06:31]Where you see those hot pink dots, those are daily record high temperatures broken in any given location. And the light pink dots represent monthly high temperature records. And all told, more than 150 new temperature records were broken globally yesterday alone, and the vast majority of those were in Europe.

[00:06:51]So, what's behind these sweltering temperatures? It's a concept called a heat dome. We've talked about heat domes before here on First Alert Weather Extra, but we'll give you a quick refresher. A heat dome is essentially this large stationary area of high pressure like you see on your screen.

[00:07:06]High pressure typically causes air to sink, and as it sinks, it warms up. And this traps heat at the surface for an extended period of time leading to the heat wave that we've seen. And unfortunately, that heat wave has already taken a human toll. Seven people died in France alone as a result of the extreme heat, including five drownings.

[00:07:27]There's also a climate connection to the heat. Climate scientist Kristoff Casso told French newspaper Lemon that this heat wave was an unprecedented event that would have been quote virtually impossible before the dawn of the industrial revolution. So just how long is this extreme heat expected to last?

[00:07:46]Luckily, the ridge of high pressure producing the heat begins to break down this weekend, and cooler air is expected to move in by early next week, finally bringing some relief to parts of