This study presents an innovative approach to reconstructing historical thunderstorm and hail activity using documentary evidence. It combines a systematic, source-critical analysis with Transformer-based language models. A particular strength lies in the development of a structured classification framework that accounts for differences in source types, linguistic variability, and uncertainty while yielding physically plausible long-term patterns in convective weather observations. Applying ThunderstormBERT and HailBERT further demonstrates the potential of automated, language-based methods to efficiently extract meteorological information from large, heterogeneous historical archives. The analysis reveals the robustness of the reconstructed hail and thunderstorm signals, as well as the challenges associated with intermediate-intensity and winter events. Overall, the manuscript offers a reproducible framework for transforming historical textual evidence into quantitative climate information, providing a promising basis for extending the observational record of long-term convective weather variability.

This study presents a valuable long-term analysis of the relationship between dry springs and hot European summers. It combines documentary evidence, the 600-year ModE-RA reconstruction, and complementary model simulations and reanalyses. One of its particular strengths is the consistency of the identified relationship across different datasets and approaches. Southeastern Europe emerges as a key region where spring precipitation deficits are associated with subsequent summer warming and more intense heat waves. A detailed analysis of historical extremes, including the exceptional summer of 1473, illustrates the atmospheric and hydroclimatic processes involved. Notably, the regression analysis reveals that late-spring precipitation, especially in April and May, influences summer temperatures independently of atmospheric circulation. Overall, the manuscript offers a useful historical perspective on compound heat-drought hazards and provides relevant insights for understanding past climate extremes and present-day European climate risks.