The residents of Montevideo suffered this Monday (17) with the impacts of one of the heaviest rains in recent years in Uruguay. The storm left streets flooded and cars covered to the roof, affecting utilities and causing damage to property.
The rain came after a week of record temperatures in the country. On Friday (14), the city of Florida, 85 kilometers from Montevideo, recorded 44°C, which had not happened since 1943 in Uruguay. “Between Thursday (13) and Friday, several meteorological stations exceeded their historical values ​​for the month of January”, informed the Uruguayan Institute of Meteorology at the time.
On the afternoon of this Monday, the institution reported that the rainfall recorded in Montevideo was 50 to 100 millimeters, being more intense between 5 am and 7 am — by way of comparison, in the storms of the last few days in Minas Gerais, it rained 241.7 millimeters. in Belo Horizonte between the 8th and 10th.
“I can say that the amount of water that fell [nessas últimas horas] It hadn’t fallen in many years,” said Jorge Cuello, director of the Departmental Emergency Coordination Center in Montevideo, adding that “it rained more in a few hours than it rains in a month.”
According to the Uruguayan newspaper El PaÃs, in some places the winds reached 90 kilometers per hour. The city of Canelones, 45 kilometers from the capital, was also heavily affected by the storm. The expectation, according to the Uruguayan authorities, is that the rains will continue, albeit at a lower intensity, at least until the end of the month.
The National Administration of Power Plants and Transmissions estimates that around 24,000 services were affected by the storm. At 6 pm, the company reported on Twitter that 14,000 customers were without electricity in the country and that problems persisted in seven substations, which were flooded.
“It is estimated that between Tuesday and Wednesday (in some departments) it will be possible to restore electricity to customers,” the agency said.
In videos posted on social media, you can see cars and buses trying to get through the floods. In one, a driver chooses to get out of the vehicle, half covered in water, to wait for rescue.
The heavy rain also hit several houses in Montevideo. “The water pressed against the garage door on the ground floor and came in like a tsunami,” a resident of the coastal MalvÃn neighborhood told the newspaper El PaÃs. “It came like a tide. My husband tried to put away the things we had, some of value. The photos of my children when they were born, for example, were in the garage.”
Another neighbor said that there are those who have lost everything. “They just kept what they were wearing, I would never have imagined that something like this could happen,” he said. In the building where he lives, in the same neighborhood, the garage was also flooded. “Right now, there are about ten or 12 cars under water.”
The director of the Montevideo Emergency Coordination Center, Jorge Cuello, defended the municipal management and said that the events of this Monday “are not a maintenance problem”. “Nature sometimes punishes us, as it does in all parts of the world, not just in Montevideo,” he told the press.
The rains were also recorded in Buenos Aires, in neighboring Argentina. The country has also been facing the strongest heat wave since 1906, when official measurements began. In the early hours of Saturday (15), Buenos Aires recorded 30°C, the highest minimum temperature in history.
In Cordoba, where there have been major fires in recent years, the authorities evacuated the tourist town of San Marcos Sierras. Firefighters say they had difficulties controlling the fire due to the temperature above 40°C and strong winds.
The heat may also have been linked to a blackout last week, which affected water and energy supplies for 700,000 people in the Buenos Aires metropolitan region. On the occasion, shops had to close their doors and Covid detection test centers changed the operating scheme.
On Monday, the storm eased the heat a little, to around 25°C in the afternoon.
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