Despite mid-afternoon high temperatures and sunny skies to close out the weekend, a fast-approaching cold front can change beach conditions quickly.

“We are going to see waves increase really fast behind the front and that is why we are concerned about beachgoers, because they can be caught unprepared,” said Brett Borchardt, a senior meteorologist with the Chicago office of the National Weather Service.

Waves of 5 to 8 feet and life-threatening currents persisting into Monday evening will create a high swim risk on southern Lake Michigan beaches from Illinois to Indiana, which account for half of all drownings in the lake. The weather service also cautions people against venturing out onto piers, jetties, break walls and other shoreline structures.

In keeping with a beach hazards statement, in effect from 9 p.m. Sunday until 1 a.m. Tuesday, the Chicago Park District has asked visitors to keep an eye out on the flag color warning system, which is updated on their website at chicagoparkdistrict.com/parks-facilities/beaches and each beach throughout the day. A green flag indicates swimming is permitted, a yellow one urges caution and a red flag means a swim ban is in place due to unsafe swimming standards.

Cool, breezy conditions will continue throughout Monday too.

“(It) will be the coolest day of the week and potentially one of the coolest days of the summer, if I go as far as to say that, with high temperatures along the lakeshore struggling to climb out of the low to mid-60s,” Borchardt said.

“But it is going to be a short-lived cold snap — if I may call it a cold snap — with temperatures quickly rebounding,” he said.

Temperatures will climb back to seasonably summer standards Tuesday through the second half of the work week, as they reach the mid- to upper-80s Wednesday. But the mild, pleasant weather could be interrupted by chances for thunderstorms and showers later in the week.

“We’re getting to the time of year where some of those storms could be strong to severe just given the amount of heat and moisture available in the atmosphere,” Borchardt said. “So it’s that Thursday to Friday timeframe we have our eye on right now for the highest chances.”

The meteorologist added that locals should keep in mind June and July are typically the hottest months of the year.

“Heat can sneak up on us, especially when we’re not acclimated,” he said. “So just keep an eye on friends and family.”

Last summer, the city was hit by waves of boiling-hot temperatures. In late July, heat indexes ranged from 95 to 105 degrees — a measure of relative humidity and air temperature that indicates how it really feels outside.

On Aug. 24, 2023, temperatures at O’Hare International Airport, the city’s official recording site, reached 100 degrees, the first time since the deadly heat wave of July 1995. Heat indexes then reached over 115 degrees.

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Current conditions at O’Hare International Airport is overcast at 78 degrees, and farther south at Midway Airport is the same at mostly cloudy at 75 degrees.

Officials said scattered showers are expected Saturday with the potential for isolated thunderstorms, but severe weather was not expected.

Officials in Livonia, Michigan, said the tornado tore through several neighborhoods on Wednesday afternoon and developed so quickly that there was no advance notice from the National Weather Service or others that would have normally led to the activation of warning sirens.

The storm uprooted a massive tree that fell on one family’s house and came through the roof, landing on a bed where a woman and her 2-year-old were sleeping, officials said in a post on the city’s website. Crews worked for nearly an hour to remove the roof and parts of the tree and then lift the tree to get the victims out.

The toddler was pronounced dead at the scene, officials said. The mother was transported to a local hospital in critical condition.

A 2-week-old sibling who was in a crib in a separate room was not injured but taken to a hospital for an evaluation, Livonia Fire Department Chief Robert Jennison told WDIV-TV.

“This is a terrible tragedy for our community,” Mayor Maureen Miller Brosnan said in the statement. “Our hearts are broken, too, and we send our deepest sympathies.”

The National Weather Service in Detroit confirmed on the social platform X that an EF1 tornado with a peak wind speed of 95 mph (153 kmh) moved through Livonia. The agency said the twister traveled a path spanning over 5 miles (8 kilometers), uprooting trees and damaging some homes.

A representative from the weather service called it a spin-up storm that didn’t show up on their radars in enough time to issue a warning, according to city officials.

It has been a grim spring for tornadoes in the U.S., where severe weather killed at least 24 people during the Memorial Day holiday weekend alone. April had the second-highest number of tornadoes on record in the country. The storms come as climate change contributes in general to the severity of storms around the world.

Tornado warnings were issued for parts of several other states on Wednesday night, including Ohio, New Jersey and Delaware. In New Hampshire’s Seacoast area, storms took down trees and caused power outages.

In Maryland, emergency workers responded to reports that people were trapped inside structures that collapsed after a tornado hit Wednesday night.

The tornado was spotted in a suburban area of Montgomery County northwest of Washington, the National Weather Service said in a social media post warning people in the area to take cover.

There were reports of three collapsed structures in Gaithersburg with people trapped inside, Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service spokesperson Pete Piringer said.

Piringer said the most significant damage occurred when a large tree fell on a single-family house, leaving five people injured, including one with traumatic injuries. He said they were all transported to a hospital.

Local television footage showed large downed trees that damaged houses when they fell.

David Pazos, Montgomery County Fire and Rescue assistant chief, said there were a lot of power outages.

“We don’t know what people’s needs are, so we’re having to go door to door to assess whether they need fire and rescue services or need relocation because of damage to their homes,” he said.

In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, fires at two homes on opposite ends of the city were believed to have been started by lightning strikes that happened within 15 minutes of each other, Fire Chief William McQuillen said. Both homes were damaged and one was considered uninhabitable. No injuries were reported.

National Weather Service officials said the storms are ahead of a cold front moving from west to east across the area through the early afternoon. The potential storms are mostly expected southeast of Peru to Chicago, officials said.

Possible heavy downpours are expected in the morning. Officials said another band of showers and thunderstorms was expected Wednesday night.

Current conditions at Midway Airport is mostly cloudy at 75 degrees. Farther north at O’Hare International Airport conditions are the same at 73 degrees.

“There are better chances of thunderstorms in the early afternoon and late morning in Rockford,” said David King, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. “The question becomes, does that system that’s kind of tracking to the northeast bring anything into the city later tonight. And we can’t completely rule it out.”

King said he would predict a 30 to 40% chance of scattered showers and thunderstorms in the city tonight, though it’s possible rain passes Chicago completely.

If the city sees storms tonight, they will likely be to the north and west of Chicago, he added.

King also said the city will experience rising temperatures before a dip Monday night.

“We’ve got O’Hare slated to get to about 85, Midway 86, so anywhere in the mid 80s, creeping towards the upper 80s today,” King said. “And then temperatures will drop into the upper 60s. Just stay aware of the weather today.”

Officials said the wet weather is expected Saturday starting mid morning into the afternoon. Officials cautioned at times, ponding of water may occur in low spots. Officials expect the rain to taper Saturday evening.

Current conditions at O’Hare International Airport is light rain fog and mist at 61 degrees, and farther south at Midway Airport conditions are the same at 62 degrees.

Widespread outages were reported in north Texas, which includes Dallas and Fort Worth, where an oppressive, early-season heat wave added to the misery. More than 300,000 customers in Dallas County alone lacked electricity Tuesday as the outages extended into rural east Texas, according to PowerOutage.us.

Voters in the state’s runoff elections found some polling places without power. Roughly 100 voting sites in Dallas County were knocked offline. Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins declared a disaster area and noted that some nursing homes were using generators. “This ultimately will be a multi-day power outage situation,” Jenkins said Tuesday.

More rough weather and heavy rains were forecast for the Dallas area Tuesday night. Heavy thunderstorms also were plowing toward Houston, where officials warned that winds as strong as 70 mph could cause damage less than two weeks after hurricane-force winds knocked out power to more than 800,000 homes and businesses.

Destructive storms over the weekend caused deaths in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, North Carolina and Virginia. Meanwhile in the Midwest, an unusual weather phenomenon called a “gustnado” that looks like a small tornado brought some dramatic moments to a western Michigan lake over the weekend.

Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell will travel to Arkansas on Wednesday as the Biden administration continues assessing the damage from the weekend tornadoes.

Seven people were killed in Cooke County, Texas, from a tornado that tore through a mobile home park Saturday, officials said, and eight deaths were reported across Arkansas.

Two people died in Mayes County, Oklahoma, east of Tulsa, authorities said. The injured included guests at an outdoor wedding. A Missouri man died Sunday after a tree limb fell onto his tent as he was camping.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said five people had died in his state during storms that struck close to where a devastating swarm of twisters killed 81 people in December 2021. One family lost their home for a second time on the same lot where a twister leveled their house less than three years ago.

Roughly 150,000 homes and businesses lacked electricity midday Tuesday in Louisiana, Kentucky, Arkansas, West Virginia and Missouri.

It has been a grim month of tornadoes and severe weather in the nation’s midsection.

Tornadoes in Iowa last week left at least five people dead and dozens injured. Storms killed eight people in Houston this month. April had the second-highest number of tornadoes on record in the country. The storms come as climate change contributes in general to the severity of storms around the world.

Late May is the peak of tornado season, but the recent storms have been exceptionally violent, producing very strong tornadoes, said Victor Gensini, a meteorology professor at Northern Illinois University.

“Over the weekend, we’ve had a lot of hot and humid air, a lot of gasoline, a lot of fuel for these storms. And we’ve had a really strong jet stream as well. That jet stream has been aiding in providing the wind shear necessary for these types of tornadoes,” Gensini said.

Harold Brooks, a senior scientist at the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma, said a persistent pattern of warm, moist air is to blame for the string of tornadoes over the past two months.

That air is at the northern edge of a heat dome bringing temperatures typically seen at the height of summer to late May.

The heat index — a combination of air temperature and humidity to indicate how the heat feels to the human body — reached triple digits in parts of south Texas and was expected to stay there for several days.

For more information on recent tornado reports, see The Associated Press Tornado Tracker.

Associated Press journalists around the country contributed to this report, including Ken Miller, Jennifer McDermott, Sarah Brumfield, Kathy McCormack, Acacia Coronado, Jeffrey Collins, Bruce Schreiner and Julio Cortez.

Despite several public announcements asking patrons to disperse, thousands of festivalgoers refused to leave Grant Park for a considerable amount of time and many chanted the Grammy Award-winning artist’s name, “Peso, Peso,” in unison and in protest of the decision to stop the concert.

The rainout was a massive disappointment for the tens of thousands who had attended Sueños, now in its third year. Before Peso Pluma was scheduled to take the stage, organizers posted a message with a red background on a large screen urging attendees to evacuate the premises due to severe weather. Most remained in disbelief and angry.

The organizers’ decision came after heavy storms had already battered Chicago and the suburbs throughout much of the day, forcing organizers to cancel a number of earlier performances. But after the initial wave of storms moved through the area, organizers around 1 p.m. announced they would allow people to enter at 3 p.m. and start the show an hour later. But then, right before 8 p.m., another wave of storms arrived and the Sueños team announced the festival was being canceled “due to severe weather in the area.”

In an Instagram post, organizers said they decided to cancel the second day of the festival in coordination with the National Weather Service and Chicago public safety officials.

“We did everything we could to keep the fest going,” organizers said in the social media statement. “The decisions to have a delayed start and evacuation were not taken lightly. We will never put anything above the safety of our community.”

The cancellation of the festival on Sunday came one day after Sueños saw its largest crowd, as nearly 70,000 people attended the Latino music festival on Saturday.

Sueños started as a festival to celebrate Latino culture and create a unique space for reggaeton music, but it has transformed into a festival highlighting the rise of regional Mexican music over the last few years. Artists like Pluma and young Mexican American singers like Xavi and Ivan Cornejo, who performed Saturday, have crossed over into a more mainstream market.

Sueños has quickly become a staple of the city, recognizing the presence and economic power of Latinos in Chicago and across the nation. Though attendees vary in background, the majority are young Latinos. A line with hundreds of festivalgoers wrapped along Michigan Avenue as they waited to enter the festival Saturday. Several said they had been in line for more than an hour.

The two-day festival is presented by the producers behind Baja Beach Fest, Chicago’s Reventon Promotion and C3 Presents, the Live Nation subsidiary that also puts together Lollapalooza.

The storms inflicted their worst damage in a region spanning from north of Dallas to the northwest corner of Arkansas, and the system threatened to bring more violent weather to other parts of the Midwest later in the day and to the East Coast on Monday.

Seven deaths were reported in Cooke County, Texas, near the Oklahoma border, where a tornado Saturday night plowed through a rural area near a mobile home park, officials said. Storms also killed two people and destroyed houses in Oklahoma, where the injured included guests at an outdoor wedding. Tens of thousands of residents were without power across the region.

“It’s just a trail of debris left. The devastation is pretty severe,” Cooke County Sheriff Ray Sappington told The Associated Press.

The dead included two children, ages 2 and 5, the sheriff said. The Texas county includes the small community of Valley View, which was among the hardest-hit areas. Three family members were found dead in one home, Sappington said.

Hugo Parra, who lives in Farmers Branch, north of Dallas, said he rode out the storm with 40 to 50 people in the bathroom of the truck stop near Valley View. The storm sheared the roof and walls off the building, mangling metal beams and leaving battered cars in the parking lot.

“A firefighter came to check on us and he said, ‘You’re very lucky,’” Parra said. “The best way to describe this is the wind tried to rip us out of the bathrooms.”

Multiple people were transported to hospitals by ambulance and helicopter in Denton County, Texas, also north of Dallas. But officials did not immediately know the full extent of the injuries.

At least five people were killed in Arkansas, including a 26-year-old woman who was found dead outside a destroyed home in Olvey, a small community in Boone County, according to Daniel Bolen of the county’s emergency management office. Another person died in Benton County, and two more bodies were found in Marion County. In Oklahoma, two people died in Mayes County, east of Tulsa, officials said.

Elsewhere, a man was killed Sunday in Louisville, Kentucky, when a tree fell on him, police said. Louisville Mayor Craig Greenburg confirmed it was a storm-related death on social media.

A DEADLY SERIES OF STORMS
The destruction continued a grim month of deadly severe weather in the nation’s midsection.

Tornadoes in Iowa this week left at least five people dead and dozens injured. The deadly twisters have spawned during a historically bad season for tornadoes, at a time when climate change contributes to the severity of storms around the world. April had the second-highest number of tornadoes on record in the country.

Meteorologists and authorities had issued urgent warnings to seek cover as the storms marched across the region overnight. “If you are in the path of this storm take cover now!” the National Weather Service office in Norman, Oklahoma, posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.

HOMES DESTROYED, ROADS BLOCKED
Daybreak began to reveal the full scope of the devastation.

Residents woke up Sunday to overturned cars and collapsed garages. Some residents could be seen pacing and assessing the damage. Nearby, neighbors sat on the foundation of a wrecked home.

In Valley View, near the truck stop, the storms ripped the roofs off homes and blew out windows. Clothing, insulation, bits of plastic and other pieces of debris were wrapped around miles of barbed wire fence line surrounding grazing land in the rural area.

WIDESPREAD POWER OUTAGES
The severe weather knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in the path of the storms.

More than 100,000 customers in Arkansas were without power Sunday. In neighboring Missouri, more than 100,000 were also without power along the southern state border. Texas reported 57,000 outages while 7,400 were reported in Oklahoma, according to the tracking website poweroutage.us.

Inaccessible roads and downed power lines in Oklahoma also led officials in the town of Claremore, near Tulsa, to announce on social media that the city was “shut down” due to the damage.

MORE SEVERE WEATHER IN FORECAST
The system causing the latest severe weather was expected to move east over the rest of the Memorial Day weekend.

The start of the Indianapolis 500 was delayed as a strong storm pushed into the area, forcing Indianapolis Motor Speedway officials to evacuate about 125,000 race fans. The video boards inside the speedway flashed that a severe thunderstorm warning was in effect as the band of rain, along with dangerous wind and lightning, approached from the west.

More severe storms were predicted in Illinois, Missouri and Kentucky.

The risk of severe weather moves into North Carolina and Virginia on Monday, forecasters said.

Associated Press reporters Sophia Tareen in Chicago; Kathy McCormack in Concord, N.H.; Acacia Coronado in Austin, Texas; Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina; and Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, contributed to this report.

Earlier Friday officials issued a severe thunderstorm watch that expired at 1 p.m.

Thunderstorms began sweeping over Chicago and in portions of central and northeast Illinois, and northwest Indiana.

Shortly after 12:05 p.m., radar indicated severe thunderstorms were spotted along a line extending from Woodridge to near Manhattan, officials said. The storm was moving east at 30 mph.

Officials warned damage to roofs, siding and trees is possible.

The storms are mostly expected west of Chicago, with damaging wind up to 70 mph, officials said. The scattered thunderstorms are expected through early evening.

With those storms, officials expect damaging wind gust, large hail and possible tornadoes. Officials said the highest tornado risk will be from the Chicago metro area westward.

Current conditions at Midway airport is overcast at 69 degrees, and farther north at farther north at O’Hare International Airport conditions are the same at 68 degrees.

Officials expect temperatures in the high 70s Friday, dropping to the high 50s in the night hours with an 80% chance of thunderstorms. Officials expect a break from stormy conditions Saturday when clear skies are expected. But Sunday there is a 50 to 80% chance of thunderstorms with a high in the low 70s expected.