High intensity storms hit Uruguay between the afternoon and night of Sunday with heavy rains, hail of various sizes, lightning and strong winds. Strong and, in some cases, severe storms were more concentrated in departments in the south and east of the country, such as Montevideo, Canelones, San José, Maldonado and Rocha. In the department of Maldonado, the storms that began at the end of the afternoon were very intense. The Laguna del Sauce airport (Punta del Este) recorded heavy rain with lightning and wind gusts of around 80 km/h.
The Brazilian Metsul service explained that “very heavy clouds that formed over the province of Buenos Aires advanced towards the Río de la Plata and reached the south and east of Uruguay in record time! The storms were the result of the movement of a cold front that, upon meeting warm air, formed storm clouds.
Severe weather in Uruguay brought hail that reached medium size in some spots. One man even suffered back injuries when he was hit by the largest hailstones, according to the Twitter account of Matías Mederos, a scholar of meteorological phenomena.
It was very hot in the hours that preceded the arrival of the cold front in the La Plata region. On Sunday afternoon the temperature reached 37.7ºC at the observatory in the city of Buenos Aires and 38.1ºC at Ezeiza. In Uruguay, the temperature reached 38.4ºC in Salto while in the capital Montevideo the Prado station registered 33.1ºC.
