Heavy storms that struck the east and northeast of the state of Santa Catarina in Brazil from January 16th to 17th resulted in one fatality.
Due to the consequences of the heavy rain, 11 municipalities in the state declared a state of emergency.
In Florianópolis, 13 and eighty-two hundredths inches of precipitation were recorded in 48 hours at the Santo Antônio de Lisboa station. Roads were flooded everywhere, drivers were isolated, some were rescued from the roofs of their cars. On one of the streets, the asphalt collapsed, and a car fell into the resulting sinkhole; the driver needed assistance. In Celso Ramos, a fire station collapsed. On Highway SC-401, a key regional artery, floodwaters also paralyzed traffic.
The climatic disaster brought significant economic consequences, especially in Balneário Camboriú, one of the most important tourist destinations in Brazil. The peak summer season, which attracts thousands of national and international tourists, was severely affected by hotel booking cancellations and restrictions on access to the most affected areas.
The capital of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, was hit by a storm with heavy rain, winds of up to sixty-three and four-tenths miles per hour, and hail. The heaviest rain was in the central region of Porto Alegre: in just half an hour, zero and seventy-nine hundredths of an inch fell, which is about 20% of the average for the entire month.
The cause of such powerful storm clouds, which caused the storm, was high temperature. According to the National Institute of Meteorology at the station in the Jardim Botânico area, it reached ninety-five and two-tenths degrees Fahrenheit.
A few days earlier, in the state of Minas Gerais, a severe storm caused torrential rains, which led to powerful floods and landslides.
The rain peaked on January 12th, when more than three and fifteen hundred inches of precipitation fell in less than an hour.
The municipality of Ipatinga was the hardest hit, where 10 people died from a landslide. Another person died during the storm in the neighboring municipality of Santana do Paraíso.
According to the Civil Defense of Minas Gerais on January 15th, the number of cities in a state of emergency increased to 63.
Scientists attribute the sharp increase in the strength and number of storms on the planet to abnormal warming and increased moisture content in the atmosphere. But there are already new technologies that, if widely implemented, can reduce atmospheric humidity and help reduce the frequency of such cataclysms as abnormal precipitation, storms, and hurricanes, giving humanity time to combat the main climate threat.
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