Vacation report: Zonda Tuesday

Tuesday, September 2, the sun rose gloriously above Chilecito. We got up at 6 AM and had a half-conscious breakfast. The tour guide came to fetch us on his van at 7, to go to Talampaya and Ischigualasto (Valle de la Luna). These are natural preserves with unique geological formations, and the main reason why we thought of Chilecito for our vacations. (You can also go to Villa Unión, which is much closer to Talampaya, but there's nothing else to do there. The same goes for Valle Fértil, which is opposite Valle de la Luna in San Juan. Both are OK if you have your own vehicle and don't mind changing from one hotel to another.)

Carrying our mate gear, some warm clothing, and the compulsory cap and sunblock, we exited Chilecito, passed by Nonogasta, and then the Cuesta de Miranda, between the mountains (I'm not going to refer to this beautiful place right now). Then we took a dirt road, asphalted road, dirt again, a couple of sleepy villages, and finally we came up to the entrance gate of the Talampaya National Park. A strong wind was blowing, and dust flew around.

The guide got off the van to record our entry and came back after a while. "People, the park is closed", he said calmly. For two whole second I stared at him, waiting for some laughter to emerge after what was indoubtedly a joke told to every tourist — una jodita, as we say in Argentina. It wasn't. It was the truth.

Only then we realized the wind was blowing stronger and stronger. It was the zonda, a dry wind that comes down from the mountains and is felt by the Cuyo provinces of central and central-northern Argentina at the foot of the Andes. This zonda brought reddish dust and sand in incredible amounts and at a terrible speed. It was just starting and the horizon was already vanishing, blurred out of sight by a brown mass of the color of Talampaya's iron-laden sand. Not only sightseeing or taking pictures would be impossible, but anything could fly away, or come flying with, such a wind.

We stayed there for a while to inquire about the park rangers' opinion. The zonda was going to last for a few hours at least, and even after that there would be too much suspended dust. It was entirely likely that the wind wouldn't stop during the whole day.

Dispirited, we took the road back to Chilecito. The zonda's entry way among the mountains could be seen clearly at a distance of a few kilometres: a uniform opaque brownish jet that ran and expanded after us. To my surprise, I noticed I was resigned, even content. The trip to the park and view on the way had been fabulous. I had no right to complain because an unforeseeable weather incident had ruined the main tour. We would have a new chance two days later.

We got back to Chilecito after midday. The zonda had arrived as well. The sky and the tops of the hills had disappeared, swallowed by the enveloping brown cloud. It was cooler than the day before, so off we went to see cacti... which I'll come to later.

We have smog

Smog isn't a common word in Spanish. We're familiar with it but nobody really uses it. Our large cities naturally have some, always, but it tends not to be that visible. Buenos Aires and Rosario are on a plain beside large bodies of water and with no natural obstacles to keep airborne pollution in its place. I don't know how Córdoba manages that, but I've never heard of it having smog despite being inside a big hole.

When the owners of vast tracts of land in the Paraná Delta's islands started burning the scrubland to prepare those lands for cultivation or pasture, we got to know smog. This is etymologically correct smog I'm talking about — it's smoke plus fog, the latter being caused by cool weather and high humidity.

Now some early morning fog makes for great pictures, but smoke and ashes aren't that healthy, especially at the beginning of winter, when people's respiratory systems are already oversensitive. I didn't feel anything funny myself while taking the photo above, but then most of the blurry stuff was true fog. The lamppost you see near the center of the picture (above the guy's head) was only one block away. When you turned round, the view was much clearer, but a faint greenish-gray screen was readily apparent.

Besides that, I swear I'd never heard of so many plane delays due to smog. These are bad times for road trips too — the road blockages set up by farmers and truck drivers have stopped for the moment, but in this region (say from Rosario to Buenos Aires and around) there's so much fog and smoke that roads are totally or partially closed to traffic every day, until the sun dissolves some of the stuff. And traffic accidents are so common that the radio broadcasts the body count next to the weather forecast.

(I object to calling these "accidents", since in most cases they're caused simply by disrespect for the law, overconfidence and disregard of basic safety measures, for which Argentinians are infamously known. If you find yourself inside an airborne gray soup, the right thing to do is flash your lights appropriately and stop beside the road, no matter if you're late for work or the start of your vacations. And if you see someone stopping beside the road ahead of you, you should consider doing the same. The Argentinian's typical reaction, however, is to trust his good stars, disregard a few near misses, curse the weather, and finally crash into someone and blame the state for not forcing him to stop.)

The fires on the islands are obviously not being monitored by anyone. On any given day it's easy to spot two or more columns of smoke rising from different places along the floodplain of the Paraná, opposite the coast of Rosario.

The fires are intentional or derived from intentional ones. Though the weather might be humid, it hasn't rained a respectable amount for months (in fact the north of Santa Fe has been declared an emergency area because of the drought), so all that withered grass and plants and trees are prone to ignite at the very lightest touch of flame. The wind usually carries the smoke away toward the south (to Buenos Aires), but part of it always remains here and affects the coastal areas of the city. If I can see where it comes from, then the authorities (governors, mayors, police, judges, prosecutors, ecological management offices) can see it as well. Why does nothing happen?

Vacations in Córdoba: Quebrada del Condorito

On our third day in Córdoba, we intended to reach the Quebrada del Condorito (which translates as Little Condor's Gorge), a gorge on whose walls condors can be seen from up close. The gorge and the high plateau that surrounds it at no less than 1,900 m above sea level, called Pampa de Achala, are all part of Quebrada del Condorito National Park, created in 1996. There's a project to raise condors there and repopulate the area with them.

If we'd had our way, we could've chosen the day and enjoy it to the max. But it turned out that you have to buy bus tickets in advance, or you may not get a place. So we got our tickets for Saturday morning on Thursday afternoon. It's the bus that goes along the winding road known as Camino de las Altas Cumbres (High Summits Road), crossing the Sierras Grandes range from Villa Carlos Paz (west of Córdoba City) to Mina Clavero, and we had to get off the bus midway, in a place called La Pampilla.

Well, Friday night was unbearably hot and humid, so we went to bed reviewing the precautions stated in the national park's brochures for sunny days: lots of water to drink, a light windbreaker since the wind blows strong all the time at those heights, some good sunblock, etc. An hour later, however, we heard the familiar faraway rumble of thunder, followed by a steady downpour of rain.

Come morning, there was still raining lightly. We didn't want the bus ticket money to go to waste, but even disregarding that, we would probably have no choice after this — who knows when we could get other tickets. Off we went, with the vague hope that the rain could stop and maybe even the clouds could part. We had a two-hour trip before us into an area where the weather is known to change rapidly, so it wasn't completely ridiculous to think that.

La Pampilla was just a spot along the road. We'd somehow gotten the idea that there were huge signs pointing to where the adventurous tourist was supposed to go, but no. We almost climbed over a fence on the wrong side of the road, until we spotted a sign and a path on the opposite side. We took it. It was cold (10 degrees? 5 degrees?) and there was a drizzle, and wind blowing it into our faces (I had to take off my glasses). About a mile later, shivering and dripping wet, we came to the park rangers' house. We were informed of the various dangers (including pumas) and sent on our way, with the warning that there weren't any other human-built shelters of any kind beyond that point. Yipee.

Soon we stopped feeling so cold. The landscape was soberly beautiful and the road wasn't steep. However, we were literally inside a rain cloud most of the time. By the time we reached the middle point, we were soaked all over, except where our windbreakers had (partially) protected us. We forged on. We got to the last marked spot (number 10), and there we found a sign indicating the way for the place where you could actually see the condors... 45 minutes away.

We turned back. I felt I was going to faint, and Marisa was shivering. We searched for shelter, and found a rock with a top projection that kept the wind and most of the rain from us. We took out the thermos to prepare hot mates... only to find the water had cooled off. By now it was lukewarm — we threw it over our hands to regain the sensation, and then ate our ham-and-cheese sandwiches. That was good.

We retraced our steps. Once we got disoriented and went in a circle for 15 minutes. Soon afterward, though, I sensed a change in light. The drizzle had all but stopped. I put on my glasses. The wind was blowing away the clouds, and a bit of sun was beginning to shine through. Minutes later, a patch of blue sky appeared and expanded.

We found another big boulder to cover from the wind, and took off a couple of layers of clothing, including our socks. They wouldn't dry completely, but they would get warm, as we would. We stayed there for a while, and then headed back, dead tired but uplifted. I saw many details of the landscape for the first time — I realized that before, with the wind and the rain, I'd kept my eyes fixed to the ground and all my efforts concentrated in merely walking on.

The trip was worth it. Even with the rain, the cold, and not seeing a single condor up there, we had a lot of fun.

Rain all over

The weather has become unstable as of late, maybe a sign that the tranquil workings of summer's furnace are finally being disturbed by the proximity of the equinox (still more than three weeks away). In simpler terms, it's hot, but it's not sunny and hot all the time — sometimes it's just clammy.

It's softly raining as I write this. Right now I should've been at the Flag Memorial, preparing to watch the reenactment of the first hoisting of the Argentine flag, which took place on the banks of the Paraná River exactly 196 years ago. But it rained cats and dogs right after noon, and then it started again a couple of hours ago, so they called it off, together with other outdoors activities planned for tonight. Of course, the rain did not bring any relief to the heat — it's the same steam-bath as yesterday. With a little more steam.

Like most people I know, I'm a bit sick of this summer. I'm overwhelmed by the heat, the low pressure, the humidity. I don't have the strength to go out and walk and take pictures, or to try resuming outdoors exercise. I spend way too much time sitting before the computer, but I can't think. So I don't have much to tell, and I don't feel like sitting down to write it down, plus I'm having real heavy work at the office. All of this is why I'm blogging intermitently, instead of every day.

The office — that's a real mess. For obvious reasons I can't reveal too much about that here, but let's say conflict is bubbling just below the surface of the provincial administration — the bitter underground conflict between those who want to get to work and finally see there's someone paying attention to their work, and those who have never worked or wanted anything but to suck the state's tit and devote office days to gossip over coffee, and now feel threatened but can't express it openly for fear of being discovered, even though everybody knows what they are. Yes, folks, such are the deep human dramas you find in our public offices.

I intend to wait for more cheerful topics, or at least interesting ones, before I write one more blog post. Let us hope together...

Blackout count: 3

The Power Supply Fluctuation Watch recorded a new event yesterday. Blackout #3 of the 2007/2008 season has been assigned the name Carlos. It began with minor drops of voltage just after sunset, followed by recovery, and ending with a large loss of voltage that lasted until the morning.

In other news, the outgoing government of Santa Fe led by Governor Jorge Obeid continues to appoint scores of its own officials, political allies, and friends and relatives of the governor, his cabinet, and influential former governor Carlos Reutemann, to high-ranking vacant posts in the public administration, the judiciary and the Provincial Power Company (Empresa Provincial de la Energía, EPE).

Sorrento power plant

On a related note, EPE workers and managers, despite being extremely well-paid, haven't had the time or the ability to repair the Sorrento thermoelectric power plant (located in the northeast of Rosario), which supplies 160 MW to the grid. After a terribly bad summer last year, Sorrento has been out of order for the last ten months, and though it was supposed to resume working in December, further repairs will push the date to early February, after the worst part of summer is over. The head of EPE, governor Obeid's cousin, was not available for comments.

EPE is said to have serious shortages of personnel in certain areas, while others are overpopulated by (or were just created especially to harbour) unqualified people appointed there in violation of regulations just because they have family or political contacts in the management. Wages paid by EPE are legendarily high. The company will close 2007 with an estimated AR$90 million deficit, double the figure of 2006, and will have to be asisted with government (i.e. taxpayers') money.

Since the Front for Victory lost the election in September, the provincial government has been cutting supplies to its public offices, and the quality of its services has gone downhill. This hasn't prevented the government party to advertise itself using the same posters that appeared during the campaign — huge colour prints boasting "4 years of hard work, without raising taxes". The Peronists seem to be determined not to leave a single coin, a single spare printer ink cartridge or a single made-up vacant post on their way out, and are turning the judiciary and the (formally) independent control offices into a minefield for the next administration.

Boy, this will take years to fix...

Anniversaries and natural rhythms

Today's the anniversary of the Hail Hell. On November 15, 2006, a storm with hailstones big as golf balls brought Rosario to its knees. The effects are felt even today. You can still see its marks in some cars, whose owners could not or would not repair, and the hysteria that ensues every time hail is mentioned in a weather forecast as a slight possibility shows that people haven't forgotten.

I've always said that having a car is like having a child. A very dumb child who never grows up and demands constant attention and lots of expensive food and gear. Some actually treat their cars as they would treat their children (or better). A car will never learn to avoid hail, and so people who can't be bothered to walk ten blocks every morning and choose to clog the streets with their cars are doomed to be always on the alert, so they can run to their little babies and put them under a roof if the need arises.

(If you think the above rant is a personal digression of mine aimed at specific people, you're right. But it may apply to you, so think about it. For the most part a car is not needed for everyday activities here in the big city. You know that.)

As befitting the anniversary of a weird weather event, today's weather is also messed up. There's not a cloud in sight and no hail is possible, but the morning looks and feels like it was June instead of November. I've never seen a mid-spring season like this, with temperatures falling below 10 degrees Celsius as soon as the sun goes down. Yesterday, though the sun was blasting, it was cold and windy even at noon. Half the people I know (including myself) caught a cold or something worse last week.

Up until a few years ago, there used to be a certain day in the year (it could be September, it could be October) when your mother said "Well, kids, let's take all the warm winter clothes out of the drawers and off the hangers, fold them and put them away neatly in the closet's top drawers which you have to use a chair to reach. We'll take them down next year when the cold season comes. We won't need any of it until March." Such a thing is impossible today. We live by cold fronts and heat waves today — no seasons.

Storm and blackout season

The first storm of the season arrived in Rosario last Friday, October 26, at about 7:15 PM. If this is going to become the norm for mid-Spring and summer (and it certainly looks like it), we're in for a lot of trouble. At least we didn't get hail, like last year. Yet.

For some strange chance, I left home for Japanese school earlier than usual. I had hurried a bit in order to have a chance to go with my camera and take some sunset pictures before the class began. I packed my umbrella just in case. I realized I wouldn't be able to take pictures because it was cloudy, and I also realized I was hungry, so I left the camera at home, and when I arrived at the school, I sat down at the shokudō and asked Alicia-san for a piece of her delicious ricotta cake and a carton of juice to wash it down and cool myself (it was like 30 degrees!) while I waited for sensei to come.

Five minutes later I heard a loud whoosh outside, then another, and then all hell broke loose. It was as if a million giant rain machines up in the sky had been turned on at once. Gusts of wind over 100 km/h forced us to close the windows. Thunder and lightning shook the walls.

The fluorescent lights flickered and turned off for a couple of seconds while we were in class, then came back again. At 9 PM the class was over and it was still raining, though not heavily. I was wearing sandals, so I got my feet wet, but nothing else. As a classmate and I stumbled over broken tree branches, paddles filled with dirty water and leaves, and unexpected holes in the sidewalk, we saw an uprooted tree leaning against a house, and severed power cables dangling from the lines.

I got back to a pitch-dark neighbourhood lit only by passing cars and by the occasional shop that held on using a portable generator. At home, my family was having dinner with candles — nothing romantic about that.

The blackout lasted more than I'd expected, and in fact longer than any other previous blackout I can remember. Power came back after 25–26 hours. On Saturday I had plans to do a photo tour (I'll tell you about that later) and I had to visit a friend to charge the battery of my camera in his house. Since pictures are worth several orders of magnitude more than words, I'll let you see by yourselves.

Coverage:

• La Capital: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
• Rosario3: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
• Rosario/12: 1.
• La Nación: 1.
• Clarín: 1.
• 26Noticias: 1.
• Taringa! (with nice pictures): 1.
• YouTube video: 1.
  

End of the wait?

I don't usually write on Saturdays, but this will be brief anyway. Yesterday after I came home, I learned that the Ludueña Stream was on the brink of overflowing. It was drizzling all afternoon. At about 5:30 PM my mother, my aunt and I went to check the stream by ourselves. We walked about 10–12 blocks from home and saw this:


As you surely noticed, there were other watching as well (in fact, a crowd). The stream comes from the west of the city in a canal, and at this point it is piped underground. The pipes were built in the 1990s. I don't remember the exact date, but I do remember myself as a teen watching a huge hole with several excavators working down there to make room for the pipes.

After this we walked another 10 or so blocks east, towards the river. A few hundred meters before the mouth of the stream, the pipes end and the stream enters a new canalized section. This was the view there:



(The massive building in the second picture is the Portal shopping mall, which opened in 2004. I don't think they imagined the stream could rise so much.) Again, there were a lot of people exchanging rumours, speculating and doing folk math about the level of the stream. The experts (the real ones) were warning that a rise wave was coming from the west and would reach our area around 8 PM. I heard the White Helmets had been sent to Rosario and were assisting the people; they were giving out thousands of sandbags, candles and other supplies.

We went back home in a taxi. The driver was a Malvinas veteran; he said he was going to end his shift and head for an evacuation center, where he and the other vets have been working for the refugees. My mother went to a meeting in the community center, to get some updated info and advice. The head of the municipal Hydraulics Department was there. She came back with passably good news: the stream was fairly stable as of the latest measurement, and as long as there was no more rain and it remained like that during the night, everything would go well. Moreover, the Hydraulics guy told the neighbours that the river would have to rise to a ridiculous level to stop the outflow of the stream, and that we shouldn't judge the behaviour of the stream by the water level near its mouth, since that was highly variable, and the last section was in fact like 5 meters below our neighbourhood's elevation.

Anyway, we got candles and food, and I let a couple of friends know about our plight just in case. We sat down to eat dinner. At 9 PM my father went to the community center to learn the updated measurement of the stream. It was stable. The sky was clearing a bit and there was a chilly wind; we saw the moon for the first time in a week. We went to sleep.

It's all gray, chilly, very humid and slighly drizzly today. The stream is lower than yesterday and heavy rain seems very unlikely. There are about 4,000 evacuees in Rosario in 7 emergency sites, but they'll be able to go back home soon, or so they say. The situation in Santa Fe City has worsened; they have 20,000 evacuees, they don't have enough large facilities for them, and the rain continues up there.

The wait has been terrible, but it seems to have ended for us. The public works that so many people fought for have done their job. In 1986 there were 160 mm of rain in a few days, and my part of the neighbourhood was flooded by 70 cm of water. Since last Monday it rained 487 mm. That's two or three times the average for the entire month of March, something that will not repeat itself (we hope) in decades. And we didn't get flooded.

I've been reporting the situation to NowPublic.com (where I can upload large pictures and videos freely, unlike Flickr!). Other people have been uploading videos on YouTube. Check those out.

The deluge continues but so does life

This should've been out yesterday, but the news about the flood were more important, so I'm posting it now and updating it.

Wednesday was a long day. I woke up early as I normally do, had a shower, got dressed, and had breakfast, all of it oblivious to the rain — I thought it would be raining lightly and I could run for the bus with minor wetting. Then my father came and asked, "Did you take a look outside already? I think you can't get out." There was enough water in the street to row a small boat. I waited to see if the rain stopped but it got worse, so I phoned work to let them know. They said no problem. I checked to see if I had Internet access and wrote for this blog... In the process I read all the papers, while I listened to Radio 2 online (there's no local news on TV before 7 PM, and then it's not great-quality news, and you can't watch it online). Then the long wait started.


By mid-morning the water had started to subside, but there was still too much of it. I sat down and watched Roman Polański's The Pianist on DVD, interrupted by lunch (it's a long movie). I liked it, but it really wasn't good for my mood. I took a nap... then read some more news... answered my emails... and somehow managed to waste my time until 5 PM.

Now, what I hadn't had the chance to tell you... I got the electromyography on my leg as scheduled on Tuesday afternoon. It wasn't a pleasing experience. The doctor, a woman in her early 40s, saw me in an excessively large room, accompanied by the operator of the machine that measures your nerve impulses, and told me to take off my pants (and socks). Now I'm not prudish at all, but being in a spacious room with no screens and undressing in the middle of it before these women felt a bit awkward. So I lie down in my boxers, and this woman begins sticking needles into my leg. At first everything was OK... Stick a needle, contract or extend a muscle to see the response (I heard my nerve impulses as static in the machine). Then I got a needle into my calf and it started to get painful when I pushed as instructed. Apparently there was no good response to the electrode, so she thrusted the needle inward. I didn't exactly cry, but close. After a couple of minutes, the technologist murmured "He's in pain!" and the sadistic doctor relented. She measured nervous speed by making me wiggle my toes, and then sent me off.

She told me she'd report the results to my traumatologist over the phone, so the next day I went to the community center to see him. He came 35 minutes late and then got me waiting for another 50 minutes while he took care of other patients (he's in charge of physical therapy as well). Just when I was about to pound him with a loose tile, he called me in.

The EMG was normal (and it only cost me 50 pesos and 10 minutes of torture to know, woohoo!). The reduced space between my vertebrae is not compressing my nerves. The sensation in my leg is due entirely to muscular problems. The solution is more exercise — more time, and more varied. I've been sitting before a computer 6 hours a day for years, so it's not surprising that suddenly beginning a serious exercise program brought such pains. So the answer lies in ignoring the pain, getting my body accustomed, stretching with care, and taking a seriously hot shower immediately after it. In an extreme case, the doctor told me, I could try therapy (heat, ultrasound), but it's not necessary, nor are analgesics or muscle relaxants. "Go with the natural thing", he said, more-or-less.

So if-and-when the rain stops, I'm going out jogging again. It may hurt a bit but now I know I'm not slowly breaking anything.

(That ends the post I was supposed to release yesterday.) Well, it's now Friday, and the above might take a while. The rain has not stopped; it's actually getting worse. The two major streams in Rosario (the Ludueña in the north and the Saladillo in the south) decreased their flow yesterday, as the rain stopped for several hours, but they're rising again. It rained cats and dogs this morning and the Ludueña actually poured into the street near its mouth. The Paraná River reached its evacuation level of 5.30 m, and the ravine in the coast of Rosario collapsed in two places, taking precarious homes with it and killing two people.

My mother called me to the office to tell me about the stream, and that my street was flooded again. It felt like a punch on my stomach. I couldn't do anything else at work. I waited half an hour and thought of going to a friend's house and wait. Then I remembered that my brother was alone with my grandfather at home. What the heck, I thought; I can take my shoes off and get my feet wet. In the bus the people were exchanging news and gossip. Fortunately the water had gone away, mostly, when I arrived. A group of guys in yellow where checking the sewers.


The rain stopped again, but there will be more evacuees. When it rains, it indeed pours: the emergency center inside the Newell's Old Boys stadium got partly flooded. A new evacuation center (with room for 300) has been prepped at the Aeronautical Lyceum of Funes. Besides this, the situation in Rosario seems to have stabilized; the 3,200-something evacuees will have to wait, and multiple inconveniences will pop out everywhere (streets blocked, sewers overflowed, etc.), but it doesn't seem like it'll get terribly worse.

In Santa Fe City, however, the situation has quickly deteriorated in the last 24 hours. There are 16,000 people evacuated in Santa Fe and the neighbouring towns of Santo Tomé and Recreo; one third of the capital city is flooded, and public services (transportation, electric power) are failing. Moreover, the only hope for many parts of the city is the arrival of high-powered pumps to get the water out, since it has no natural draining paths. To make things worse, the city is practically isolated, as the flood has covered its access roads, particularly the Rosario–Santa Fe Highway; the only way out is through the Hernandarias Subfluvial Tunnel, across the river, to Paraná, the capital of Entre Ríos. The governor finally came back from Caracas (on a standby flight, without luggage) and is organizing a crisis committee. The national Health Minister Ginés González García came to assess the situation and brought medicines and vaccines for the evacuees.

I haven't heard anything about Paraná except it had a few dozen evacuees, but Entre Ríos is also getting its share; they had a record rainfall of 340 mm in 24 hours, and 3,000 people were evacuated so far. The Gualeguay River, the most important in the province, overflowed and is threatening the homonymous city. The huge storm system that is causing the floods here is slowly moving east.

The radio is serving as an emergency coordinator of sorts, calling the various authorities and experts to let the public know what to do (or not do). The reports come all the time and they're uniformly gloomy; it's by no means safe to say anything at all about the end of the storm, which may be tonight, tomorrow, or even next Monday.

The Deluge III

I'm wondering whether these days will be known as "The Great Rains" in the future...

It's the fourth day of rain here in Rosario. Yesterday afternoon the precipitation stopped for some hours and the clouds became less dense, but the sun didn't appear. Today it rained during the morning, then stopped, then drizzled, da capo.

Yesterday's alert in my barrio was just a scare, but it was justified by the menacing appearance of the rising water in the streets. When the rain stopped, many people went to do an eye check of the Ludueña Stream, where it emerges from four large underground pipes into its mouth, a few hundred meters before merging with the Paraná. Based on the pictures I saw in today's paper, the pipes were barely sufficient, but the water didn't go over the brim. The water in my street was the result of a sewage system that is relatively new but hasn't been maintained and was overwhelmed by the amount of water and trash; a few hours after the rain stopped, it had drained completely as expected.

(The above is an old scanned picture of the part of the Ludueña Stream I was talking about. The water was much lower, stagnated and polluted. Currently the water covers the pipe exits and reaches up to the inner brim.)

There's a delay dam in the upper course of the Ludueña, and derivation channels, built in the 1990s, after decades of fighting against the politicians' indifference. Populous areas of the city, including my neighbourhood, suffered episodic flooding every time exceptional rainfall caused the Ludueña Stream to overflow its banks. The last one, in 1986, was truly catastrophic, and everyone from my age up remembers it, so we were on edge. At 6 PM there was a meeting in the community center (I was there waiting for my doctor!) and it was explained that the Ludueña's works had proven our salvation. Back then we would've been up to our necks in water after only half of the precipitations we've had since Monday.

(You might want to get a map of Santa Fe now.)

Anyway, many others didn't have such luck. The rain soaked up the soil in the countryside and overflowed canals and streams all around the city and in several other parts of the province. Consider that our region is almost completely flat and it's traversed by so many shallow watercourses that until the 19th century it was known as Pago de los Arroyos, i.e. "Land of the Streams". The Carcarañá River, a tributary of the Paraná north of Rosario, also overflowed its banks yesterday. The Saladillo Stream, which forms part of the southern limit of Rosario, is close to overflowing too. The level of the Paraná River reached 5.29 m, only one centimeter below the official evacuation level — i.e. the level at which the river itself (not its tributaries, not the rain) may overflow and force the evacuation of low-lying areas.

As the rain subsided around Rosario, the situation worsened near the provincial capital, Santa Fe. There are now about 20,000 people evacuated in Santa Fe Province: 12,000 in Santa Fe City, 3,200 in Rosario (where they're being sent to a third evacuation center), and at least 600 in Carcarañá. Santa Fe City is finding it hard to drain all that water; it's maybe historically significant that in colonial times it had to be moved a few years after its foundation because the terrain was too floodable, and the choice of a new site was not very good. Santa Fe is much more vulnerable to river flooding than Rosario, and now the coastal defenses built to contain the river's rising water are keeping the rain water inside.

The picture is not brighter elsewhere. The city of Rafaela (pop. 84,000) is under 1 meter of water in parts. Many small towns have been completely flooded or stand literally isolated, their access roads covered by the waters. National Routes 7, 9, 33 and 34 were partly submerged and blocked in several segments, as was the Rosario–Santa Fe Highway and smaller Provincial Routes; NR 9 and 33 are working again now.

The vice governor of Santa Fe, María Eugenia Bielsa, declared a state of "hydrical emergency", while governor Jorge Obeid, who is on an official trip in Venezuela, is trying to get back as soon as possible (I was expecting that, only two days ago!). The Santa Fe Ministry of Interior got AFA to suspend the local football tournament schedule for this weekend, in part because the authorities and the police are too busy, and in part because there are roads, towns and stadiums under water. (By the way, and again showing the porteño view, La Nación has a space for this horrible catastrophe only to note that the River–Colón football match has been suspended. Clarín has a better coverage, focused on the also worrying problems of Entre Ríos, with videos and all.)

The executive branch of the Municipality of Rosario asked the City Council for a 2-million-peso (US$660,000) emergency aid package, which was approved this afternoon; this is to cover the cost of mattresses, bed sheets, food, medicine, and the logistics of handling thousands of evacuees. Right now, as I told you, there are three emergency centers ready: the Communications Battalion No. 121 and the gyms of the Newell's Old Boys stadium and the Náutico Avellaneda club. These are already full, so one more site is being readied at the Military Lyceum in nearby Funes.

The National Meteorological Service has renewed its weather alert (rain, localized storms, possibly hail) for the nth time, and says the bad weather might continue until Friday.

The Deluge II

Folks, this is starting to worry me.

It's 6:45 AM and I should be headed for work, but I can't get out of my house. There's water all over my sidewalk, it must be a foot deep in the street, and it's still raining. It has never really stopped. Last night the sky cleared up a bit but then the clouds gathered again and rain's been pouring down all night.



About 240 mm of rain have fallen over Rosario and its area since the start of the deluge. Just to give you an idea, the average annual precipitation here is less than 1,100 mm. I guess they'll have to update that. As of the latest news, there are 2,200 people evacuated. The first batch were taken to the place usually reserved for such emergencies, the Communications Battalion No. 121, a large military facility in the south of the city, but it filled up yesterday and there are now 910 people sleeping inside the Newell's Old Boys stadium. The evacuees are being taken there by buses belonging to the municipal transport company. They're given time to clean themselves up and provided with mattresses, bedsheets and clothing. Following their custom, veterans of the Falklands/Malvinas War have installed a kitchen and are cooking for the evacuees. Most of them are poor, often mothers with four, five or more children; in many cases, where the water level is not deep, the men have chosen to stay and guard their scarce possessions.

The Paraná River is not going to rise more, but rain continues to fall on the basin of the Ludueña Stream. The Ibarlucea Canal, a derivation that enters Rosario from the northwest, overflowed yesterday and flooded several neighbourhoods, some of them with water levels of 1.5 m. The public works needed to prevent this kind of flooding won't be in place until 2 years from now.

TN's Mr. Bazán was sent to Rosario (see video) to cover the situation. Even for a typical porteño this guy was completely oblivious to... well, everything. He seems to think Rosario and Santa Fe City are near each other, or suburbs of each other. He didn't research anything about the floods of the Ludueña Stream. He spoke of the 2003 flood and how our relationship to the river has changed — it was Santa Fe City and it was the Salado River in 2003, you idiot!

At least eight schools will be closed in the metropolitan area, because they're flooded or because the facilities were otherwise damaged by the rain. National Route 9, which goes west towards Córdoba, is unusable in at least one segment, and so is National Route 22.

The National Meteorological Service says the bad weather will continue until at least Friday, with rain, storms, and maybe hail. The last hasn't happened here this time, but in Esperanza, west of the provincial capital, orange-sized hail fell yesterday.

PS: As of 9 AM there are 2,500 evacuees; they're reading the facilities of the Hipódromo (horserace track) to receive them. In the radio they're mentioning two other possible sites (private sports clubs). In my neighbourhood we have an informal "yellow alert", since water is entering through the streets; many sewer pipes are badly maintained and blocked by garbage. Only 6 blocks from here, as reported, the water is already inside the homes. Only last year we were commemorating the 20th anniversary of the last flood. The situation has improved since then, as the Ludueña Stream has been mostly piped or channelized, but this is really too much rain.

The Paraná continues to rise: it was at 5.06 m yesterday and is now at 5.18 m, which is 18 cm above the alert level and just 12 cm below the evacuation level. People are being evacuated also in Granadero Baigorria, just north of Rosario, and the San Lorenzo Stream (near San Lorenzo) is overflowing.

The Deluge

Yesterday, home, about 3:15 PM. The rain started early in the morning but the deluge came in the early afternoon. All in all 101 mm of rain between 7 AM and 4 PM. I hadn't seen my street flooded like that in years. Others had it much worse. In Funes and Roldán there was hail.





People are being evacuated from several places in the city, especially in the northwest — not coincidentally the part of the city where I live. Some say it's 800 people, others update the figure to 1,150. It's been raining all night and all morning and it's still raining right now: 160 mm up to 9 AM, since yesterday at the same time. Thousands are without power.

The Paraná River rose to 5.06 meters; the alert level is at 5 m, so there's reason to fear, but anyway the problem is in the basin of the Ludueña Stream. I called home from my office today to check on the family, since I was hearing alarming reports in the radio. We all know nothing terrible will happen, not unless a truly catastrophic deluge comes, but when I was 10 (in 1986) the Ludueña overflowed and our downstairs floor got 70 cm of water in it.

And it seems it'll be raining until Friday...

Super summer storm!

Yesterday there was a terrible storm over a wide area between Rosario and Buenos Aires. Summer storms are commonly the product of several days of high temperature and humidity followed by the arrival of a cold front. The heat and the humidity had been so much that it rained cats and dogs for hours.

I've told you about climate change before. Ten, twenty years ago I remember these storms once every year, or even every two or three years. They were clearly unusual events. But extreme weather has become so frequent that we might as well revise what "extreme" means. Lately it seems that almost every storm is a catastrophe.

Yesterday's rain was accompanied by wind and lightning. The state of maintenance of our sewage pipes and our electrical grid is such that within the first hour of any significant storm, thousands are left without power and/or get their homes flooded. Soon after the storm released its fury, while I was in my office (it was 7:15 AM), lightning stroke nearby and blew off something in our phone line, so we're incommunicado now. Surprisingly, nothing else happened there or at home. However, when I came back I found that a group of people living in a shanty town beside an avenue about 10 blocks from home had blocked the street and organized a picket. The avenue was like a river of mud, and these people were (I guess) demanding attention from the authorities the only way they could, as they'd probably lost all their precarious furniture. The picket was still there today.

We haven't had more hail of the kind we got in November, but the weather has become a serious issue. People, especially people who own cars and use them every day, have developed an accute obsession with forecasts. Being caught in a storm might mean getting your car trapped in a flooded street, pounded by hailstones, or damaged by a falling tree limb. After a wave of criticism caused by its lack of quick warnings, the National Meteorological Service has upgraded its weather alert system, and every day paranoid rosarinos check the news and promptly inform their family and workmates (by word of mouth, phone or text message) as soon as they spot the words ALERTA METEOROLÓGICA.

Here comes the water

With all the fuss about the recognition that climate change is man-made, the Argentine media manufactured their usual lightweight news to alert the people that, indeed, we've been so careless that pollution is suddenly causing Buenos Aires (and some other less important places, such as the rest of the country) to be hot as hell. Doña Rosa* feels reassured, since this is what she's been saying all along.

* "Doña Rosa" is Bernardo Neustadt's mildly elitist personification of (the lowest common denominator of) public opinion. If you weren't in Argentina and at least in your teens during the 1980s, just forget the reference.

The good news is that the IPCC's report has been so widely publicized that nobody can ignore it anymore (we hope). Of course the denial freaks up there in the United States (mainly), who insist that global warming is a pinko/hippie myth created by the New World Order minions of the UN, will keep to their belief, but sensible governments, and even George W. Bush, will now have to respond to extra pressure on the issue.

On the local front, climate has indeed been erratic and tending to the extreme, as you can see by reading some of my posts. If you allow me to sink to the level of anecdotic evidence (Telenoche passes that for evening news all the time, so why not me?), I'd never seen such weird weather before the 1990s. Back in school, we were told that Rosario was in the Humid Pampa, a fertile plain with temperate climate and four distinct seasons. That seems to be changing now. Winters are shorter, with a few scattered occurrences of week-long cold spells, and no rain at all. In the summer, you have several days of increasing temperatures up to a point where hell breaks loose and terrible storms bring winds, rain and hail in massive amounts; then the sky clears and the cycle repeats. Spring is prone to rain and hot as well, and autumn is brief, windy, unstable, but much less rainy that it used to (ten years ago in April and May, you couldn't go out without an overcoat and/or an umbrella). The whole region seems to be shifting toward a subtropical climate with two seasons: dry and rainy.

As of now, the north of Argentina is getting a lot of precipitation. People got flooded in Salta and Tucumán, and downstream along the course of the Salado River, in Santiago del Estero, a dam broke, apparently not because it was badly built (as it always happens) but because it simply wasn't designed to contain that much water.

It's also been raining a lot in the upper course of the Argentine portion of the Paraná River (around the Iguazú Falls), and all that water is coming down. In Corrientes, the capital of the province of the same name, 1,000 families in 17 barrios of the city have been affected, 100 people have had to be relocated, and the level of the river is expected to increase even more. The experts down here estimate that that flow will reach our area in about three weeks, and the level will rise by 40 cm, enough to cause some trouble in the islands off the coast of Rosario in the flood plain of the Paraná (see? that's why they call it a flood plain). The farmers are already moving their cattle to safer places, since the islands are rather low-lying. On this side, the river will flood half the sandy beach of La Florida, but nothing more. The good thing about Rosario is that the Paraná cannot flood it because it's built on higher terrain; rain flows naturally away from the center and off an abrupt natural ravine.

In the meantime, a heat wave has been hitting us for a week, and it was supposed to end today with a heavy rainstorm, but yesterday afternoon the sky turned overcast, cool gusts of wind blew for a couple of hours, and only a few drops fell here and there — we're cloudy today, and rather hot again, though it's bearable. My parents got married around this time of year, 31 years ago; I guess nobody would set that date today — you might get a scorching sunny day just as well as a tropical storm...

Hail in Mendoza

Latest news of Argentina include a weather gone absolutely crazy. In the northwest of Argentina (provinces of Salta and Tucumán) it's been raining an awful lot, and the Salado River downstream in Santiago del Estero broke a dam and overflowed its banks, prompting many to evacuate (the Salado is a very long river — it starts up there and ends 1,500 km later in the Paraná River, near Santa Fe City, which it flooded in 2003). Last Wednesday 170 mm of rain fell in Reconquista (northern Santa Fe), flooding several parts of the city, its surroundings and many neighbouring towns in a matter of hours.

Last Friday, the city of San Rafael in Mendoza (a hot, sunny paradise when I was there two weeks ago) was hit by a hailstorm. Anti-hail nets protecting the vine crops were useless against the reportedly fist-sized hailstones that fell for about 25 minutes, and many saw their crops partly or completely ruined less than a month before the National Festival of the Vendimia (grape harvest). This, plus the damages in the city, may add up to about 50–60 million pesos (US$17–20 million). (Incidentally, if you want to know more about Mendoza's hail and wine, try Argenvino. I just discovered it — I was linked from it without my knowledge!)

(The above is a vineyard besides the Valentín Bianchi winery, not far from San Rafael City, as it was before the storm... I presume it doesn't look like that now.)

Deadly hail seems to have become more common everywhere lately (as you'll remember if you were in Rosario during November's hail hell). San Rafael had been hit already on 31 December 2006 and I seem to remember the area of Mendoza City had had its share a few days before my trip in early January.

Nobody died in San Rafael then or now, fortunately, but the mendocinos are clearly concerned to the point of having developed their own anti-hail rockets. The scientists of the Civil Institute of Space Technology created this rocket to replace the Russian-made devices that were in use before the devaluation of the Argentine peso made them unaffordable — and which were not very useful anyway, since they were designed to target clouds at a height of 8 km, while the typical clouds in Cuyo are above 15 km.


PS: As of 2 Feb, the national government has pledged to help Mendoza with AR$25 million, to be used to repair infrastructure and rebuild homes. Besides the immediate damage, the storm destroyed the fertility of 4,000 hectares of soil, which will be unproductive for 3 years.

Night out with the boys

I don't usually do advertising for free, but I thought this would merit some. Last Saturday night I went with some friends to a bar that one of them had visited once long ago. Nenina is on a corner of the northern Costanera (the avenue that follows the Paraná River starting just north of the city center), close to the impressive arc of the Rosario-Victoria Bridge, maybe 300 m south of Circunvalación Avenue and the municipal limit. Not many people go there on purpose, since the "good" parts of Costanera are on the middle section, full of open-air bars, discos, and the beach. Once you get to Nenina, you either stop there or have to turn back, or at most make in a wide detour to go up to Circunvalación, on the bridge, and across the maze of islands and river arms, eastward, to Entre Ríos.

I tell you, this bar should be in tourist guidebooks. Rosario's been working on that field lately, initially much to the surprise of us locals, but I still have to see a guide with a list of those small places that make a city special — those curious spots that most people don't know about and that you get news of only by word of mouth.

Nenina can be a bar like any other, where you can order a pizza or a carlitos (a hot sandwich with cheese, ham, and ketchup, optionally plus tomato slices, hard-boiled egg, mayonnaise, etc., not a tostado as in Buenos Aires) and down it with a beer... but that would be an awful waste. The place specializes in cocktails, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic; its menu is about 70% drinks. It's not cheap, but it's not expensive either; and the service is so good that it makes the money seem unimportant. These guys prepare a drink like a chef prepares a favourite dish.

My friends and I sampled a few cocktails and were pleased about the quality and variety. It's not that simple to have a place in a small establishment (that already needs to cook and serve regular bar/restaurant food and drink) to store a sufficient amount of several icecream flavours, several types of fresh fruit (lemon, orange, pineapple, watermelon, strawberry...), a lot of alcoholic beverages, and slightly more exotic ingredients (Tabasco sauce for Bloody Maries, fresh leaves of hierba buena for mojitos). The drinks do take a while to come, since the place seems to be packed all the time. We arrived a bit late and couldn't get a table outside — the outside is another bar! — so we went inside, which was a bit hot. That (lack of a) choice proved the best, since one hour later it started raining... and raining... and then there was something like a hurricane. Indeed, with the icecream cocktails and the margaritas to the tune of Gloria Stefan, I felt like I was in the Caribbean during the hurricane season. Naturally, at this point the people drinking outside had to get in or leave, so the place became slightly more packed; but the wind cooled the inside of the place.

The storm went on and on... You could see the trees buckling and hear the curtains of rain hitting the roof and the windows. Mind you, we had no wheels to go back. None of us owns a car, and anyway nobody in Rosario goes out by car anymore if they plan to drink alcohol. We got to the place by bus and had to get out like that; a taxi from such a distant place to anyone's house would've been too expensive (not in an emergency, but this wasn't one, and we'd forked more than a few pesos already). We waited (Bloody Mary) and waited (more Bloody Mary) and as the storm subsided a bit we decided to brave the drizzle and go up six or seven blocks to Roundeau Boulevard, where we'd be able to catch plenty of buses. That was a mistake. Two blocks after that the drizzle turned into a deluge, as the huge low-pressure center above us sucked in more clouds. The storm reassembled and we had to seek shelter in a porch. Forty-five minutes later the rain stopped (mostly). Off we went to get our bus.

Long story short, I arrived home much later, wet and shivering. Good news is that my immune system seems to have toughened; after a string of colds in last autumn and winter, I didn't catch anything...