Spain has opened September like July again, and AEMET, the Spanish official meteorological service, says that the midsummer blast still has several days left in it. The most probable picture from the state weather service keeps the heat going through this weekend and into the start of next week, before a wider cool-down becomes more likely from Tuesday and Wednesday.

Weekend still feels like high summer

Fifteen autonomous communities in Spain have been carrying high-temperature warnings, with orange alerts covering parts of Andalucia, Aragon, Castilla y Leon, Castilla-La Mancha, Catalonia, Extremadura, Madrid, Navarra, the Basque Country and La Rioja. Provinces on that list include Cordoba, Jaen, Sevilla, Huesca, Teruel, Zaragoza, Avila, Ciudad Real, Cuenca, Toledo, Barcelona, Lleida, Tarragona, Badajoz and Caceres. Extra yellow warnings have also been out for spots in Asturias, Cantabria, Galicia, Murcia, the Valencian Community and Guipuzcoa in the Basque Country.

04/09 12:00 AVISOS HOY Y MAÑANA | España: temperaturas máximas, tormentas, lluvias y costeros. Nivel máximo de aviso: naranja.
Actualizaciones en https://t.co/BLdoSsO2Qv pic.twitter.com/qPBgw4SiLN

— AEMET (@AEMET_Esp) September 4, 2026

Afternoon peaks will be nearing 40ºC in the Ebro valley, the northeast basins and the river valleys of the southwest. A few inland pockets could brush 44ºC in the hottest hours. Nights give little breather: 24ºC or 25ºC after dark in the south-west of the country, around 22ºC in the north-east, and tropical nights above 20ºC across much of the south, the Mediterranean and those same north-east hollows. Canary Island nights may stay sticky too.

Saturday holds those 40ºC pockets. Sunday should bring a clearer dip in the western half, especially Galicia, while 39ºC to 40ºC can still hang on in the Ebro valley and the southwest river corridors. Eastern Cantabria may even move up a notch.

Dana slides in with rain for Galicia and western Cantabria

A DANA low-pressure front bringing intense rain is moving in from the southwest on the other half of the weekend. Cloud will thicken first over the western third, and isolated heavy showers or thunderstorms look most likely in Galicia and western Cantabria on Saturday. Rain chances ease on Sunday as that system drifts away. Low cloud, mist and fog banks can form on the Galicia and Asturias coasts, around Alboran and the Strait of Gibraltar.

Canary Island skies will stay a mix of medium and high cloud, with only a slim chance of isolated showers over higher ground. This is not a country-wide washout, just a messy split: baking interiors in the east and south-west, bumpier skies in the north-west.

Tuesday and Wednesday look like the turning point

AEMET’s working forecast is a step-by-step slide from the west, then a more general fall around Tuesday and Wednesday of next week. Readings after that should be closer to a normal September day. Early next week can still run too hot in the south-west and the interior of the eastern third, so nobody should bin the fans just yet.

Forecasters want people checking updates, because the exact track of September storms can shuffle both the heat and the rain. Anyone with outdoor work, a long drive or a packed terrace this weekend should treat Saturday and Sunday as summer, then watch AEMET’s warning map from Monday night. Official notes live on AEMET’s featured forecast page, and Europe-wide alerts are on Meteoalarm.

Jorge Rey, the popular Spanish weather forecaster known for his traditional cabañuelas forecasts, has highlighted a sharp and unusual drop in temperatures for the final days of August, describing it as historic and capable of overturning typical late-summer expectations.

His latest outlook points to a drammatic cooling after weeks of above-average heat, accompanied by strong storms in parts of the country.

Do official forecasts and models back an unusually sharp change?

AEMET’s medium-range guidance and the European model (ECMWF) do support a clear shift toward cooler and more unsettled conditions in the last week of the month, though Rey’s language of a “historic” plunge is stronger than the official wording and is concerning weather watchers.

According to AEMET’s conservative latest three-week outlook (updated mid-to-late August), the period from 24 to 30 August is expected to feature temperatures below the seasonal average across much of the interior and especially the western half of the peninsula. Rainfall is also forecast to be above normal for late August in many areas. Coastal zones and the archipelagos are more likely to stay closer to normal or slightly warmer.

The ECMWF sub-seasonal outlook reinforces this picture. For the week of 24–31 August, it shows widespread negative temperature anomalies across the peninsula, generally in the range of 1 to 3 °C below the long-term average, with larger departures (up to 3 to 6°C cooler than normal) possible over parts of Extremadura, Madrid, Castilla y León, Castilla-La Mancha and Galicia. The pattern is linked to a more mobile, wavy jet stream and the influence of Atlantic systems rather than the persistent subtropical ridge that dominated earlier in the month.

In the shorter term, a notably deep Atlantic low is already approaching. AEMET has described it as unusually intense for August; its effects are expected to bring further cooling, rain (especially in the northwest) and storms from Monday onwards. This follows a period of instability and some notable temperature falls in northern and eastern areas around the third weekend of August, when maximums in parts of the Cantabrian region and Castilla y Leon dipped toward or below 20 to 25°C in places, values that felt decidedly unseasonable after the preceding heat.

Bottom line

There is solid model and AEMET support for a genuine change of pattern: cooler-than-average temperatures for late August in many inland and western areas, increased storm and rain risk, and a break from the intense heat of earlier weeks. Whether the drop qualifies as “historic” depends on the precise locations and the final numbers that materialise. Late-summer transitions with Atlantic systems are not rare, but the combination of a deep low and the projected negative anomalies would bring a noticeable and relatively sharp turn for the final days of the month.

Expats and those with holidays booked should monitor the latest AEMET warnings, particularly for thunderstorms, hail and strong winds in the north and east in the coming days, and expect a more changeable, cooler feel in many inland areas as August draws to a close.