Southern Cone suffers from cold wave caused by polar air mass

The southernmost region of South America is facing a winter with record low temperatures, which have caused around 15 deaths and led to a restriction on gas supplies in Argentina, in addition to activating plans to shelter people in Chile and Uruguay.

Temperatures have dropped sharply in all three countries, sometimes well below 0ºC. “What happened this week in Chile and the Southern Cone in general was a cold wave caused by the escape of a polar air mass from Antarctica,” Raúl Cordero, a climatologist at the University of Santiago, explained to AFP.

In Argentina, which has some parts of the territory under alert due to low temperatures, at least nine people who lived on the streets died from the cold, according to the NGO Proyecto 7, which provides assistance to this population throughout the country.

Buenos Aires recorded its lowest temperature since 1991 yesterday (-1.9ºC). About 450 km south of the capital, in the coastal city of Miramar, it snowed this weekend, after 34 years. Much further south, in the Patagonian steppe, the small town of Maquinchao recorded -18ºC on Tuesday.

The unusual electrical demand caused a collapse in the supply of services in some sectors of Buenos Aires, where thousands of users faced blackouts, in some places for more than 24 hours.

Yesterday, Javier Milei's government suspended gas supplies to industries and gas stations to ensure households have access to supplies. On Thursday, it eliminated reference prices for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), considering that free prices contribute to a healthy market.

– Snow in Atacama –

In Uruguay, authorities have declared a “red-level public alert with nationwide coverage” to assist vulnerable people after the deaths of six people. This measure allows the government of leftist Yamandú Orsi to forcibly move people living in the open to shelters.

The cold in the capital, Montevideo, where the number of homeless people has increased in recent months, has been intense. On June 30, the lowest maximum temperature since 1967 was recorded (5.8ºC), meteorologist Mario Bidegain reported on local news program Telemundo. Chile has also implemented plans to shelter the homeless during the coldest days.

In Chillán, 400 kilometers from Santiago, temperatures dropped to -9.3ºC, according to the Chilean Meteorological Directorate (DMC). In the far north of the country, it even snowed in some areas of the Atacama Desert, the driest in the world, which has not happened for a decade.

“It is not so common for such cold air masses to be extending so much towards the northern sectors, so it cannot be ruled out that this is also caused by climate change,” Arnaldo Zúñiga, a meteorologist at the DMC, told AFP.

– Truce –

The Southern Cone, however, expects a break in polar temperatures in the coming days. This Thursday, Buenos Aires recorded 12ºC; Montevideo, 14ºC; and Santiago, 24.7ºC.

“I was quite surprised by the change from cold to hot, it was a very drastic change,” said student Dafne Naranjo, 18, in the Chilean capital. “Last week it was very cold. Now the weather has changed a lot,” she added.

In recent years, there have been more heat waves than cold waves. “The frequency of heat episodes has tripled, whether in summer or winter, not only in the Southern Cone but all over the world,” Raúl Cordero stressed. “It is not good to have heat waves, neither in winter nor in summer. They are anomalous phenomena, they are not things that should happen.”