Barometric Pressure Forecast for Sao Paulo, Brazil
Barometric pressure forecast for Sao Paulo, Brazil — on the Piratininga plateau at 2,500 feet, behind the Serra do Mar escarpment. See current barometric pressure and what it means for weather-sensitive people.
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Pressure and weather in Sao Paulo
Sao Paulo sits on a plateau roughly 760 metres above a sea that lies only sixty kilometres away, separated from the coast by the steep wall of the Serra do Mar. The altitude is what makes the city cool and changeable compared with the rest of tropical Brazil, and the escarpment is what makes its weather so abrupt. Cold fronts sweeping up from the South Atlantic arrive year-round, more often here than anywhere else in the country, and each one brings a pressure rise of eight to fourteen hPa, a wind shift to the south and a temperature drop that can exceed ten degrees within a few hours. Paulistanos joke about four seasons in a day for good reason. In the summer wet season the South Atlantic Convergence Zone can settle over the state for a week at a time, holding the barometer low and flat while rain falls almost continuously and the city's canalised rivers flood. Winter is the dry season, dominated by a subtropical high that produces long stable spells, clear cold mornings and strong thermal inversions that trap traffic pollution against the plateau until the next front scours it away.
What this means for you
Front passages here are frequent, fast and small in amplitude, so the count matters more than the depth of any one. A barometric pressure forecast showing three fronts in a week describes a harder week than a single deep low.