Temperatures are expected to plummet to -10°C, or 14°F during the month of April throughout parts of Peru’s southern highlands, reported Peru’s National Meteorology and Hydrology Institute, or Senamhi.
Though freezing temperatures are registered year-round in Tacna, Moquegua and Puno, the upcoming cold spell will be particularly intense and will spread over much of Peru’s Andes, said meteorologist Carmen Reyes.
Last year, the cold arrived early in Peru’s highlands — in April instead of June — and more than hundreds of thousands of hectares of land were affected by frost. Crops failed, livestock perished, and thousands of people suffered from respiratory diseases.
On June 19, 2008, President Alan Garcia enacted a legislative decree to declare a 60-day state of emergency in 11 of Peru’s 24 departments as temperatures in the Andean highlands continued to drop dramatically.
The cold spell phenomenon, known locally as a ‘friaje’, involves a combination of unseasonable low temperatures, frosts, snow and hail that damages crops and the high-altitude pastures on which alpacas graze.
