Chile Forum

Santiago suffering the coldest July since 1908

Santiago just had the coldest July since 1908 with an average temperature of 6 degrees Celsius. That is 2 degrees under the usual monthly average, according to the Department of Geophysics of the University of Chile.

This entire winter has been unusually cold and the effects are being felt throughout the city. One in three people in the city have been reported as having respiratory illnesses in the last few weeks.

Services to the homeless population are being stressed and deaths throughout Chile have been attributed to the cold weather due to illness and accidents with gas heaters.
With the cold in July also came a record amount of frost for the month. Seven days had temperatures below 0°. This has caused crops such as avocados, oranges and lemons to be damaged. The exports of these fruits are expected to fall by as much as 40%.

Not all businesses have been negatively affected, though: the sales of heaters have gone up by 40%. The cold weather is expected to continue into the week with highs around 16 degrees Celsius and lows around 2 degrees.

Snow in Brazil, below zero Celsius in the River Plate and tropical fish frozen

For a second day running it snowed Wednesday in Southern Brazil and in twelve of Argentina’s 24 provinces including parts of Buenos Aires as a consequence of the polar front covering most of the continent’s southern cone with zero and below zero temperatures.

Brazilians associated to sun and beaches enjoy the unexpected snow Brazilians associated to sun and beaches enjoy the unexpected snow

Light snow storms in Brazil were concentrated in areas of Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina. O Globo network aired snow flakes falling in early morning, cars covered with a thin white coating and some roads dangerously slippery because of ice.

In Argentina the phenomenon extended to Northern provinces, geographically sub-tropical while in the Patagonia and along the Andes snow reached over a metre deep, isolating villages and causing yet undisclosed losses to crops and livestock.

The extreme cold weather is expected to peak Thursday dawn with below zero temperatures and even lower with the wind chill factor.

After a harsh weekend, Argentina’s National Weather Forecast Service announced the cold weather is expected to stay until Thursday although it could again reach a freezing peak over the coming week-end.

On Wednesday a northbound cold front hit the Patagonia and central Argentine regions. In Patagonia, minimum temperatures went as low as minus 10 Celsius with even lower numbers in snowy regions, while maximum temps were in the range of zero to 7 Celsius.

Because of the freezing temperatures power consumption set new records both in Argentina and Uruguay. According to Argentina’s Planning ministry, electricity demand reached 20.669 MW at 20:15 hours when most Argentine families are home back from work. Although residential demand was satisfied, hundreds of industries suffered an anticipated blackout.

In Uruguay the power record consumption was reached on Wednesday at 20:45. The lowest temperatures were registered in the north and west of the country: minus 7 Celsius.

In related news, reports from landlocked Bolivia indicate that to the east of the country in tropical areas temperatures plummeted to zero causing “millions of dead fish” in rivers that normally flow in an environment of 20 Celsius.

Santa Cruz governor Ruben Costas said the province was suffering a “major environmental catastrophe” and warned the population not to make use of water from rivers (because of the dead fauna and flora) promising to send drinking water in municipal trucks.

“The last time something of this magnitude happened was 47 years ago”, said governor Costas.

GJJIM wrote:Our Winter up here was very cold as well, and we lost the entire apple crop in my orchard to a late April freeze. I know it's fashionable to blame climate changes on evil humans or farting cows, but the Sun is unusually quiet with few sunspots for this point in its normal cycle. Old sol seems to have more influence than all the lawyers, media pundits, and climatologists combined.

1 Million Fish Dead in Bolivian Ecological Disaster

(3 Aug. 2010 - Update: The number of dead fish and other water-dependent wildlife has increased to about 6 million.)

Over 1 million fish and thousands of alligators, turtles, dolphins and other river wildlife are floating dead in numerous Bolivian rivers in the three eastern/southern departments of Santa Cruz, Beni and Tarija. The extreme cold front that hit Bolivia in mid-July caused water temperatures to dip below the minimum temperatures river life can tolerate. As a consequence, rivers, lakes, lagoons and fisheries are brimming with decomposing fish and other creatures.

Unprecedented: Nothing like this has ever been seen in this magnitude in Bolivia. Inhabitants of riverside communities report the smell is nauseating and can be detected as far as a kilometer away from river banks. River communities, whose livelihoods depend on fishing, fear they'll run out of food and will have nothing to sell. Authorities are concerned there will be a shortage of fish in markets and are more concerned by possible threats to public health, especially in communities that also use river water for bathing and drinking, but also fear contaminated or decaying fish may end up in market stalls. They've begun a campaign to ensure market vendors and the public know how to tell the difference between fresh and unhealthy fish.

In university fish ponds and commercial fisheries the losses are also catastrophic.