By Marco Aquino
LIMA, Nov 10 (Reuters) – Peru has launched a weather forecasting platform for Pope Leo’s visit this week, with much of the country under a state of emergency over the threat of intense rainfall associated with El Niño.
The US-born, naturalized Peruvian leader of the Catholic Church began a regional tour on Friday with stops in Uruguay and Argentina, just a month after undergoing surgery to remove part of his right lung. He is expected in Peru on Wednesday for a six-day visit spanning the country’s coast, Andes and Amazon, with stops in Lima, Chiclayo, Cusco and Pucallpa before a final Mass in the capital on November 16.
Several of those stops have been experiencing unusually high temperatures for this time of year, according to authorities.
“We are already registering historic climate records, so it is quite likely that there will be new records for accumulated rainfall in the coming days,” said Raquel Loayza, a meteorologist with Peru’s SENAMHI weather agency, in an interview with Reuters.
The agency launched a mobile-friendly platform on its website offering daily weather forecasts for cities under emergency declarations, including all stops on Leo’s itinerary.
Peru’s government last week declared a two-month state of emergency in 72% of the country’s districts over the “imminent danger of intense rainfall” associated with El Niño, a cyclical weather phenomenon first named by fishermen from Peru and neighboring countries who noticed warming waters in the Pacific around Christmas time. Flooding has already damaged homes.
Leo, who spent years as a missionary and bishop in Peru, has seen the devastation firsthand: during bouts of extreme weather in 2017 and 2023, Robert Prevost, as he was then known, helped flood victims in the country’s north, at times wading out in knee-high rubber boots, according to photos circulated on social media.
In its latest report in late October, Peru’s state commission that monitors El Niño forecast a warming of “very strong” magnitude through February 2027, with rainfall from November through January “above normal” across nearly the entire country.
In the northern city of Chiclayo, where the pope will spend two days, a Mass expected to draw 1 million people is planned at Las Pampas de Pimentel, an arid area along the Pacific Ocean. Temperatures there have reached 30 to 31 degrees Celsius (86 to 88 degrees Fahrenheit) in recent days, high for this time of year, according to SENAMHI.
In Lima, a Mass expected to draw 1.2 million people is planned for November 16 at an air base that will open to pilgrims the night before. The capital has recorded unusually high temperatures of between 27 and 30 C (81 to 86 F) over the past week.
(Reporting by Marco Aquino, writing by Cassandra Garrison in Lima, editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
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