Peru, Chile and Bolivia hit by record floods, after heavy rain: 6 dead

[Mark]

February 10, 2013 – PERU - Torrential rain has been causing havoc along the Pacific coast side of South America, with flooding causing the deaths of at least six people in Peru. In the southern city of Arequipa, thousands of people were left without electricity and drinking water. In Chile, some four million people were hit by cuts to water supply blamed on landslides in San Jose de Maipo, 30 miles (48 km) south east of Santiago. The landslides contaminated two rivers supplying the capital’s water plants. The Aguas Andinas water company said it expected to bring the water supply back to normal by Sunday afternoon. Last week, even Chile’s Atacama Desert, one of the driest places in the world, suffered with heavy rain. In Peru, thousands of people have been left without electricity and drinking water. The authorities in Peru declared a state of emergency in Arequipa. The national meteorological service said that the bad weather brought down the equivalent of three months of rain in about seven hours. “There are no records of an event of this magnitude,” the local director of the service, Sebastian Zuniga, told the Andina news agency. At least two bodies were found in a car that was buried in mud after a road collapsed. Torrential rain has also fallen over most regions in neighboring Bolivia. Nearly 9,000 people are said to have been affected and crops lost to the rain. Last week, Brazil announced it would send 500 tonnes of rice to aid Bolivians hit by the natural disaster. –BBC

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[Rwood]

I checked the Atacama desert rainfalls - must have been confined to the strip of the Andean foothills, as none of the towns there recorded any rain, including Calama, which is well inland.

A couple of interesting stats - Arica hasn't had measurable rain since 2011, and Iquique has had only 0.7mm rain since 2002 (i.e. in the last 10 years).

[Rwood]

Checked further - San Pedro de Atacama (close to the Andes at 2400m ASL approx) had several hours of heavy rain, causing significant damage. This would be an unusual event there, as it is still classified as a hyperdesert climate or similar, with an annual average rainfall of less than 50mm.

Calama is about 100km away to the west with another mountain range in between, and it is firmly in the ultra-arid zone with an average of only 6mm per year.