A Record cold wave strikes Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, causing the death of at least 15 people and forcing governments to restrict the gas supply and trigger emergency accommodation plans.
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A mass of polar air from Antarctic sweeps the region, lowering temperatures significantly under 0 ° C in the three countries of South America.
In Argentina, at least nine homeless people died because of the cold during this winter, according to the NGO Proyecto 7.
In Buenos Aires, temperatures have dropped to -1.9 ° C Wednesday, its lowest level in 34 years. Power cuts caused by high demand have left thousands of people without electricity for more than 24 hours in certain areas.
Elsewhere in Argentina, snow has covered Atlantic beaches like that of Miramar (450 km from Buenos Aires) while the small Patagonian town of Maquinchao recorded -18 ° C Tuesday.
The Argentinian government has suspended the gas supply of industries and service stations on Wednesday to ensure the gas supply of households.
The Uruguay, where temperatures have dropped below zero in certain regions, decreed a “red alert” nationally after the death of six people, allowing the government to move homelessly to accommodation centers.
In Montevideo, temperatures reached a maximum of 5.8 ° C on June 30, its lowest since 1967, according to the meteorologist Mario Bidegain.
Chile has also activated accommodation plans for homeless during the coldest days. The city of Chillan, 400 kilometers south of Santiago, recorded -9.3 ° C, according to the Chilean meteorological direction.
The snow fell into certain parts of the Atacama desert, the driest in the world, for the first time in a decade.
“What happened this week in Chile and in the southern cone of America more broadly is a cold wave caused by the flight of a mass of polar air from Antarctica,” climatologist Raul Cordeo told the University of Santiago, to AFP.
The situation in the region should improve in the coming days.
