Expert warns about the duration of the cyclone that reaches Chile

Starting this Monday, part of the national territory will be affected by an extratropical cyclone, which is an abnormal concentration of clouds that revolves around a center of low atmospheric pressure.

Regarding the implication of this phenomenon in the country, the academic from the Department of Geophysics of the University of Chile and researcher from the Center for Climate and Resilience Science (CR)2, Roberto Rondanellipoints out that “this type of cyclones are typical of winter, They occur very commonly in southern Chile and the characteristic of this one is that it moves very very slowly and that it has a lot of humidity.”

“There are going to be areas of the country that They are going to receive a lot of precipitation and the precipitation is going to occur for several days in a row in some parts, for example, in the area south of Biobío it will be raining from tomorrow, Tuesday, probably, even perhaps, with interruptions, by the way, at least until the other Tuesday, that is, a full week of rain and in the central zone of Chile, In Santiago in particular, it should also start raining on Saturday and continue for several days”, he detailed.

The academic adds that “The main characteristic of this cyclone is its duration rather than its intensity,” adding that one of the striking characteristics “is that it is a very large extratropical cyclone that is almost the size of the South American continent.”

However, Professor Rondanelli clarifies that “in reality the size of the cyclone is not so important to understand the impacts it may have, but rather the wind. Many times a much smaller cyclone can be more dangerous, if it contains stronger inland winds.”

“In this case The winds of this cyclone are not as intense as one might think, We have already had much more intense extratropical cyclones, for example, the last one that people can remember was on August 8, 2015,” he explained.