Barometric Pressure Forecast for Santa Cruz, Bolivia
Barometric pressure forecast for Santa Cruz, Bolivia — on the Pirai river at the western edge of the Chaco plain, below the Andean foothills. See current barometric pressure and what it means for weather-sensitive people.
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Pressure and weather in Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz de la Sierra lies at about 1,350 feet on the alluvial plain where the last Andean foothills give way to the lowlands running east toward Brazil and south into the Gran Chaco. That geography sets up the phenomenon that governs the city's barometer, the surazo. Cold air masses forming over Patagonia funnel northward along the corridor between the Andes and the Brazilian highlands with nothing to slow them, and when one reaches Santa Cruz the temperature can fall from the mid thirties Celsius to the low teens within a few hours, accompanied by a sharp barometric rise of ten to sixteen hPa, grey skies and a persistent southerly wind that may last two or three days. Surazos arrive most often between May and August but can occur in any month, and they are the single most talked-about weather event in the city. The wet season from November to March works quite differently, with humid Amazonian air feeding afternoon thunderstorms under a barometer that barely moves, and heat and humidity doing the work that pressure does elsewhere. The dry winter between surazos is warm, dusty and stable.
What this means for you
The surazo is a rise rather than a fall, and it arrives faster than most northern-hemisphere fronts. Anyone who reacts to rapid change should treat a barometric pressure forecast showing a surazo as seriously as a falling one.