“Bomb” Cyclone Could Stop Locust Swarm from Reaching Southern Brazil

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – For extreme times, dramatic solutions. The bomb cyclone that left the sky looking apocalyptic and caused destruction in the South of Brazil could save the country from another seemingly biblical natural phenomenon.

The cloud of locusts that threatens to reach the South of Brazil should be destroyed by the cold. Meteorologist Marcelo Seluchi, general coordinator of Operations and Modeling at the National Center for Monitoring and Alert of Natural Disasters (CEMADEN), believes that the cold will hold the locusts.

“The cold brought on by the cyclone should end them. There may be frost and even snow in the southern mountains and that’s an insurmountable obstacle for the locusts, which can’t survive in such low temperatures,” Seluchi says.

The locusts are currently in Argentina suffering the effects of the same cyclone. And they should die there if the cold persists, which is a certainty, according to the weather services.

In partnership with climatologist Carlos Nobre, Seluchi conducted a preliminary analysis of the swarm of locusts last week. The cloud consists of millions of these typically solitary insects.

Climatic triggers cause them to change from the solitary to the gregarious stage, in one of the most radical and majestic transformations in nature. This year, the climatic trigger was the long dry period throughout South America’s center-south (Paraguay, southern Brazil, central-eastern Argentina, and Uruguay), according to Seluchi and Nobre. April, in particular, was abnormally dry.

Source: O Globo