Summer weather in Buenos Aires

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pets, rain, storms, summer in Buenos Aires, sunshine, temperature in Buenos Aires

It’s been a while since I was last on here and I can immediately see I have a minor obsession with the weather. The last post was about the spring, and here I am talking about summer weather in BA. Well, it’s probably because I’m British. It is indeed a British trait to talk about the climate on any given occasion, which is why “what’s the weather like in BA?” is at the top of my frequently asked questions list.

Looking out over the city from the ecological reserve

It’s mid-January and the temperature hovers between 30 and 32 degrees C; it’s been like this for about a week and that’s pretty normal for a BA summer. We walk slowly, shut doors to keep the air-conditioned cool in the rooms we use most. The cat goes three paces then has to have a little lie-down, stretched like a floppy soft toy across the tile floor. On the other hand the dogs seem to want to lie, panting, in the sun. Errands are confined to the late afternoon. Evenings are warm and close but not overbearing, and we can still sleep (barring any power cuts, which is another BA story…)

A largely deserted city street in high summer

Also normal for January and the rest of the summer months: rain. The general pattern seems to be a building heat over four to five days that results in a heavy rain storm, usually with thunder and lightning, that floods our garden for a little bit and brings the temperatures down. Only for them to rise again with the sun the next day…

The garden green after a rainstorm

This spring/ summer, freak weather events include a scorching stretch of weeks in November, temperature into the 40s on Christmas Eve and downpours heavy even by BA standards that brought waist-high floodwater to parts of the capital.

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It’s hard to imagine winter, which does get chilly here, when the view now is bright blue sky and lush green vegetation, with a warm breeze and a heavy, languid heat. And it is even more difficult to imagine England now, on the other side of the world, with its polar opposite weather. Here’s England today, as a bit of a contrast.

Meanwhile, back on the other side of the world…

Protests, road blocks, fires and still no power

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empanadas, Malbec, power cut, protests, storms

“Here too the Nation grows”

Update written four days after the storm: Still no power. Apart from the light coming from the fires, lit by protestors in the road outside our house.

Easter Sunday at around 9.30pm. A group of people barricades the road using the barriers from the construction site and a bunch of fallen trees at one end and, at the other, a burning pile of trees, branches, wood and tyres. They bang drums, water bottles, pans and buckets, calling for the return of the lights. A police car stops and a couple of officers get out, calmly watching the proceedings.

When nothing seems to be happening, the ringleaders move the protest towards the bridge at the other end of the street. This is more effective as they succeed in blocking the path of cars coming off the freeway and forcing buses to divert around the fire.

This is unheard of in Ituzaingó. These protests are the kind of things we watch on TV, the actions that happen downtown in the capital. The protest is peaceful and unthreatening, although the atmosphere is eerie with the completely darkened streets deserted by cars and the fires burning at either end. We watch proceedings with the dogs, eating our empanadas and enjoying some wine. We wonder whether we should be drinking wine and eating empanadas in these circumstances. Seems kind of strange, but that’s what these past days have been: strange.

 

Buenos Aires storm

Tags

cars, garden, rain, san telmo, storms, weather

Wednesday night, 8pm, San Telmo. I am annoyed by the woman dithering at the top of the Subte stairs as I come out of the subway. Then I see the rain. I dither alongside her, finding my umbrella and pulling on my jacket. I open my umbrella and start to walk because it seems like regular rain; easy to handle.

I am splashing up the main avenue towards the bank when suddenly the rain stops. Fantastic – a soft, cool breeze and I’ve put the umbrella down. I’ve almost made it to the bank when from nowhere the wind picks up and what seems like a wave of rain floods across the road from my left. The deluge turns the pavements to puddles then to mini-rivers in seconds. I barricade myself between a newspaper kiosk and a wall with an overhanging balcony. Fat lightning skewers hit the ground, a glass door on the restaurant opposite is wrenched from its hinges and shatters. Wheelie bins fly down the street and the power goes off.

Image from TN website

I make a dash to the bookshop to find the top floor flooded and our teacher trying to move the boxes to protect the books. We sit shivering in wet clothes discussing Malamud as the wind howls outside.

At home trees and branches are blown down and strewn across the garden. The top of the water tank is shattered over the newly exposed roots of the towering pine tree that now tips at an angle towards the construction site in the next-door lot.

Our uprooted pine

Mario comes to collect me by car and we weave in and out of the stalled traffic on the freeway, dodging crazy drivers and felled billboards and plastic awnings. The toll booths are deserted and in darkness (some were blown off their foundations in other parts of the city) and we pass through periodic patches of darkness as the lights fail across the city.

At home we have no power. The whole neighbourhood has no power. It is the Easter holidays and there is a shortage of workers, and a shortage of parts. We could be in for a long wait……