Environment · 2026-10-14 · Afternoon briefing

Spring tornado and hailstorm flood Chilean capital

An unusual spring electrical storm, accompanied by hail and a tornado, struck Santiago, Chile, on Tuesday, causing widespread flooding. The storm, which began around 3:30pm, produced a tornado that the Chilean Meteorological Directorate preliminarily classified as an EF0, the lowest intensity. Around 20 millimetres of rain fell in two and a half hours, with some districts recording 18 millimetres in a single hour, leaving 22,000 homes without electricity.

Chile's national disaster service declared a red alert for the Metropolitan Region. The event follows what is already the wettest October on record for the capital, a phenomenon intensified by El Niño. A separate mudslide on October 8th, caused by an atmospheric river, had already left six people injured and damaged around 2,000 homes. One climatologist, linking the new storm to global warming, described it as "like none ever seen in Santiago."

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• Freak hailstorm floods Santiago as tornado tears through Chile's capital
• A tornado and an unusual spring hailstorm overwhelm Santiago, Chile

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