46.7 degrees Celsius in California. Thirty-one centimetres of snow in Siberia. Egg-sized hail in eastern China. Mid-May has rarely looked like this.

Furnace Creek, in California’s Death Valley, lived up to its name this week, recording the highest temperature in the US so far in 2026: 46.7C (116F). Nearby weather stations registered 46C, underlining the scale of the heat. For mid-May, both figures are exceptional.

In Honduras, Choluteca — known as the furnace of Central America — broke the country’s all-time May temperature record twice within days. On 13 May, thermometers climbed to 42.2C (107.9F), eclipsing a record of 42.1C set only days earlier. With intense heat forecast to persist, more records are expected to fall.

Indonesia is supposedly in its cool season. The thermometers disagree. Manokwari recorded a daytime temperature of 35.8C on Wednesday. More alarming were the overnight lows: Bali airport failed to drop below 27.9C for three consecutive nights, a new record for the area. In West Timor, further east, temperatures did not fall below 26.4C, smashing the previous May record.

A heatwave also swept northern China and Mongolia, with temperatures reaching the mid- to high-30s Celsius and 10 weather stations either matching or exceeding May records.

On 11 May, the contrasts sharpened. In Rizhao, in China’s Shandong province, a violent storm battered the city with hailstones reportedly larger than eggs. On the same day, heavy snowfall struck northern Siberia — 39mm of precipitation in 12 hours, producing 31cm of snow.

All data is drawn from The Guardian’s weekly weather tracker, published 15 May 2026.

Sources