ATLANTA – September may be underway, but summer is not giving up easily.

What we know:

Temperatures across metro Atlanta will quickly climb from the 70s Friday morning into the 90s by afternoon, with the humidity making it feel even hotter.

Atlanta was sitting at 76 degrees early Friday, and most of the metro was in the mid- to upper 70s. There is about a 20% chance of showers and thunderstorms during the day, meaning most areas are expected to stay dry.

Triple-digit heat index values

The biggest weather concern Friday will be the heat.

Heat index values are expected to reach the triple digits across much of north Georgia, including:

• 🌡️ Covington: Feels like 104°
• 🌡️ Woodstock: Feels like 102°
• 🌡️ Marietta: Feels like 101°
• 🌡️ Douglasville: Feels like 101°
• 🌡️ Alpharetta: Feels like 100°
• 🌡️ Ellijay: Feels like 102°

A heat advisory is in effect until 8 p.m. for parts of northwest Georgia, stretching from Dade County toward Bartow County.

Temperatures there will only be a degree or two warmer than metro Atlanta, but that will be enough to push heat index values above advisory criteria.

Labor Day weekend brings storm chances

Saturday will remain hot, with a high near 97 degrees and about a 40% chance of showers and storms.

Rain chances will continue through the rest of the holiday weekend, generally running between 20% and 30%.

A weak backdoor cold front is expected to move through, bringing a broken line of storms and helping knock temperatures down by Labor Day.

📅 Breakout forecast

☀️ Friday: Hot and humid, highs in the 90s. About a 20% chance of storms. Heat index values around 100° to 104°.

⛈️ Saturday: High near 97°. About a 40% chance of showers and thunderstorms.

🌦️ Sunday: Still hot with a 20% to 30% chance of rain and storms.

🌤️ Labor Day Monday: High near 88°. About a 20% chance of rain as cooler air begins moving in.

☀️ Tuesday: Dry and less humid with a high near 90°.

☀️ Wednesday: Another dry day with a high around 90°.

A small taste of cooler weather

The front will not exactly usher in fall, but it will bring a noticeable change.

Temperatures will fall into the upper 80s by Monday, with a slight drop in humidity. Rain chances are also expected to fade next week, with Tuesday and Wednesday currently looking dry.

Still, with the coolest day of the seven-day forecast sitting near 88 degrees, north Georgia has a long way to go before it truly feels like fall.

ATLANTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) – A historic medical milestone is colliding with the front lines of cancer care in Georgia.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a breakthrough daily pill that chokes off tumor growth, offering a powerful new lifeline to families facing advanced pancreatic cancer.

Atlanta News First was the only local news team allowed inside the treatment room at City of Hope Atlanta in Newnan on Thursday as a patient was given her first dose to take home.

Karen Siciliano, a 61-year-old athletic director’s assistant, has been fighting stage 4 pancreatic cancer for four years. Her diagnosis came unexpectedly following a routine CT scan she requested during a general checkup just before her son’s wedding.

To receive treatment, Siciliano and her husband commute from New York to Georgia every two weeks. She has undergone more than 80 rounds of chemotherapy, maintaining her strength through personalized, aggressive care and integrated naturopathic support to keep her blood counts strong. Through it all, she has not missed a single day of work.

On Thursday, her grueling routine changed.

Siciliano is among the first patients in the country to receive Rasonque (daraxonrasib), a newly approved daily tablet. She packed the bottle carefully into her bag to take her first dose at home to avoid any unexpected side effects on her flight back to New York.

“I hold my future in my hand right here,” Siciliano said. “That bottle symbolizes a break from my body to heal from the chemo. It gives me an opportunity to be around my family a little bit more. It just gives us just a little bit of a calm.”

The drug acts as a “molecular glue” that locks onto a helper protein to choke off the cancer’s growth signals. In clinical trials, the daily pill did what was once thought impossible — nearly doubling overall survival times for the sickest patients.

The milestone is a massive victory for Georgia medical research.

City of Hope Atlanta was a key site for the pivotal clinical trials that led to the drug’s rapid FDA approval.

Brian Wortz, the director of clinical research at City of Hope Atlanta, spent years pushing the drug through its trial phases to get it to this exact bedside.

“Ultimately, that’s what we’re looking for. To figure out what’s next and how we can give our patients more hope, and more time with their families,” Wortz said.

For oncologists, having the drug on the shelves provides a rare, powerful new weapon in a field historically starved of effective treatments.

“Many times when you have a patient with pancreatic cancer, you feel like you’re letting them down because the therapies aren’t very good,” said Dr. Kristin Higgins, Chief Clinical Officer at City of Hope Atlanta. “So much when we talk about hope, it’s not tangible. But today, it is tangible.”

Over the last four years, the clinic staff has become like family to Siciliano and her husband Charlie. Because the daily pill allows for longer stretches between clinic visits, leaving her care team behind is a bittersweet transition.

As Siciliano walked out of the clinic on Thursday, nurses and staff gathered in the hallway to surprise her, cheering and crying as she prepared to head home.

“Now, you won’t see me every 28 days,” Siciliano said.

With the burden of bi-weekly chemotherapy infusions lifted, Siciliano can now focus on celebrating her granddaughter’s third birthday and welcoming a new grandchild due in March.

“I have cancer. I am not cancer. And that’s what it is,” and Siciliano.

Rasonque was fast-tracked by the FDA months ahead of schedule because the clinical trial results were undeniable. Because the drug targets the RAS pathway — a protein mutation active in 90% of pancreatic cancers but also found in roughly 30% of other solid tumors — clinical trials are already expanding to see if this same “molecular glue” can be used to treat colorectal, ovarian, and lung cancers next.

Residents inside the all-brick Bethel Towers apartments say they are living without working air conditioning, some for over a week, and others for three weeks.

Shay Boyd says the AC unit in her apartment stopped working last Tuesday. By late morning, the indoor thermostat was already reading 97 degrees.

“I have breathing problems, and at night, I gasp for air; I can’t sleep, you can’t even cook because it’s so hot,” Boyd said. “Nobody wants to live in this heat; it’s hot outside and even hotter inside.”

A few floors down, Marcia Jones reported going without cool air for more than three weeks.

“It’s been out three weeks and two days. I’m counting just because that’s how horrible it is,” Jones said. “I’m just doing my best, just trying to get through the day. That’s all I can do.”

Jones added that the oppressive conditions inside the complex are especially dangerous for young families.

“We have a lot of children in here that’s just suffering,” Jones said. “You can hear them screaming and crying.”

Residents report receiving window box fans, water, and Gatorade to cope with the soaring temperatures. There are still water and fans available. 

Big Bethel AME Church, which is connected to the apartment building, opened its downstairs area to serve as an emergency cooling center.

Many residents turned to the church’s pastor, Rev. Dr. Jay Augustine, for support.

“It is absolutely unconscionable,” Rev. Augustine said. “No one should be treated as the residents of Bethel Towers have been treated. They’ve been subjected to the worst conditions in the heat of Atlanta literally for the last more than two weeks or so with air conditioner out; there’s been no rational explanation given.”

In a statement sent to CBS News Atlanta, a representative for the building’s ownership group explained that the property’s centralized boiler and chiller system caused building-wide failures: “The property brought in United Mechanics last week when this issue arose, and they have been at the property daily working on the chiller system. Multiple parts of the system have failed. Currently, the understanding is that the pump is being replaced and that the part should arrive and be installed tomorrow. Normally, this pump would take 4 weeks to arrive, but the contractor was able to accelerate the delivery. With old buildings like Bethel, there comes an old boiler and chiller system. So, when the system goes down, it affects every unit. That is unlike traditional mixed-use buildings with individual systems.The property is doing all it can with the contractor to fix the units. They are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and any discomfort of the residents.”