Europe swelters with record heat while Typhoon Dolphin heads toward Japan

Austria recorded a July high of 40.3 °C, nearly matching its all-time peak, as Typhoon Dolphin weakened to a Category 3 storm moving west toward Japan and Taiwan.

A heatwave swept central Europe this summer, and on July 31 Wieselburg, Austria, logged a temperature of 40.3 °C, the highest July reading on record and only 0.2 °C below the all-time August high set in 2003. While parts of Europe baked, Vancouver recorded 33.6 mm of rain, making it the city’s wettest July since 2016 and the third wettest since 2008, underscoring a stark contrast in regional climate conditions. At the same time, Typhoon Dolphin surged across the Pacific, becoming the fifth Category 5 tropical cyclone of 2026 and achieving maximum sustained winds of 175 mph with a central pressure of 910 mb after a rapid 36-hour intensification.

By early August the system had weakened to Category 3, with winds around 125 mph, and was projected to strike Okinawa as a Category 1 or 2 typhoon, still delivering 80-100 mph gusts. As Dolphin approaches land, its wind field is expected to expand, shifting the primary threat from destructive winds to a potentially severe storm surge. The dual extremes of record heat in Europe and a powerful tropical storm moving toward Japan illustrate the varied and intensifying impacts of climate variability worldwide.