Argentina slowly turns into a desert... and burns!

I was just writing to @snowpea about the severe drought that is scorching Argentina´s land right now, and I decided to write a post about it and make it more graphical:

It all started about a year ago last summer, with some unusually high temperatures. Slowly but surely, the usual monthly precipitations started arriving later and later, and in fewer quantities. On average, this was one of the hottest years, even during winter. Some regions were actually flooded at the start of 2017, because on some small regions it rained 3 times the average for about 2 months, while others were dry, but as the year progressed they mostly leveled to be dry, desert dry. But it´s only now that all that lack of rain is starting to feel, and the countryside is slowly turning into an inferno. Here is the current state of the drought: only green areas are free of drought.

Source for this study

Some provinces have been 8 months without rain, causing not only loss of harvest, but cracked soils like this where nothing grows:

It is being called "the worst drought of the last 100 years", and it has affected 90% of Argentina. During a whole year on some regions it rained only 15% of the MONTHLY average, meaning in a whole year it rained less than 15% of what should have rained on a month. Meanwhile, In Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost Argentinian province, which is only 1000km apart from Antarctica, the maximum temperatures measured in this January surpassed every maximum temperature on record. Meanwhile, previously green lush rivers in our country turned into this:

This photo is of the bend of a river, called Pilcomayo, one of the central rivers in Argentina, which used to look like this:

The drought has ruined most of this harvest, but the lack of water is starting to affect towns and cities, and there are also the wildfires. Oh, so many wildfires. Let me show you some pictures of them:

The situation is critical now, as 90% of national forests have been decimated by wildfires this year, with hydrant helicopters unable to control de situation as they are literally spitting into the biggest wildfires ever, amongst the towering smoke.

For comparison: this region, which is called "Sierra de la Ventana", which used to look like this:

Now looks like this:

I truly hope for the sake of my country that rainfall arrives soon, because if it doesn´t, we may be even facing famine for the first time ever in our history(our country is famous for being the 3rd world producer of food, but this time we may not have enough to properly export). I still have to look at the numbers on that, I may be doing an update on this subject soon...

NOTE: I´m staring the tag #disasters so everyone can post about disasters decimating your region. Sometimes news don´t cover natural disasters enough, or at all. Use this tag.

Fuentes:

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