So December, January is the middle of summer, and then as you get to May, June, July, that's their winter. And the winter is actually like a rainy season, so it'll rain a lot and not quite snow, very, very occasionally, but it just gets kind of cold. So just dress in layers, you know, prepare for rain because that's how they experience winter down there. Other than that, it doesn't really rain that much, it's pretty dry overall.
In May 1997 in Chile, we had heavy heavy rains and the rain went up past the sidewalks and up to the middle of my boots and some people were really nice and gave us rides on the bus to go across areas of lots of water. I don't believe that with the same amount of rain in the United States we would have had as big a problem because we have rain gutters but they don't have them so the rain just sort of collects in the streets and that was crazy.
Okay, so Chile has all four seasons, winter, spring, summer, fall, but it's the opposite of us. So when we're in summer here in the United States, they're in winter. So their summer runs from around December to March, I would say, around then. So my biggest tip is during the summer, at least yeah in Concepcion, it's super warm, super hot. There might be like some days where it's like you're in an area where it's windy at night, so you'll only want a light jacket, but you'll want breezy clothes. But during the winter, it's super cold and it rains a lot. Not as much as it used to, but it rains. So you need good rain boots and a good raincoat. I bought a, buy an umbrella there because they have better umbrellas there that are special for like wind and stuff. And yeah, good luck and just, oh if you're a girl, wear, bring fleece tights because those help a ton to layer.
Southern Chile, for Osorno, is really like the northwest. It's green, it's really, really, really humid, but the main thing to remember is that our seasons for the United States are flipped there, so when it's cold here, it's going to be hot there. In Punta Arenas, in the southern end, there are some really strong summer winds, some of them which you can lean against and hold yourself up. Be careful with that, don't try that, but these are really strong winds up to like 50, 60 miles an hour. They're kind of ridiculous, but just remember that when you're in the city center, hold on to the chains if it's the middle of summer because it can get pretty nuts out there.
The hot and the cold are kind of extreme. It doesn't get as cold as like a Utah winter does, but because there's no insulation in the houses, you're just always cold. Always, no matter what. You're just freezing for like two and a half straight months. And then the summer is just really long, really hot. Not as hot as like a lot of other places, but you just feel it. Like the sun just hurts you. Also, it hardly ever rains in Santiago, but when it does, the streets are flooded and it's horrible. So definitely bring like a rain jacket and an umbrella, but don't worry about waterproofing everything because it's not going to be all the time that it's raining.
My last month, it snowed. It's not supposed to snow there because it's like way close to the coast, but it snowed. That was pretty crazy. Another time, we had a great flood that we were living, we were in a sector that was like a massive bowl and it just started raining torrentially. I've never seen so much rain in my entire life and basically it filled the entire thing up to like our waists. So we were walking in like water up to our waists and it had like a current, like there were cars trying to drive through. It was the craziest thing I've ever seen in my life. It was nuts. We also went and climbed a volcano and got stuck in a blizzard. That was pretty crazy. So careful if you try and do that. And other than that, I can't think of too much. In the summer, it gets warm. It gets actually really hot and the sun is really strong. So wear sunscreen or you will get burned, but it was awesome. I really liked the weather there.
In Chile, in the southern part, it rains most of the year. It's pretty moderate temperatures. The winter does get pretty cold, so definitely lots of jackets and sweaters and things like that are helpful. Gloves, hats, the scarves are real popular down there, so lots of scarves we use. We just bought those down there, though. Lots of rain, though. I mean, you spend most of your time there walking in the rain. I just recommend a nice jacket instead of an umbrella because those tend to break with the wind. So just a nice jacket, some good boots, shoes to keep your feet dry.
It's mild, it's kind of like a desert. It won't have a whole lot of rain, especially if you're up in the northern part, up in San Felipe, Jai Jai, Los Andes. But when it does rain, it pours. It can really just pour on us like crazy. If some clouds get stuck up against the mountains, they can be there for days just pouring. And the rainy season's usually during the winter time, so it can be pretty cold, wet, and miserable. But other than that, it's pretty awesome, nothing too crazy. No tornadoes, no hurricanes, just earthquakes. But that doesn't have anything to do with the weather, so.
And they have some pretty heavy wind storms, especially when you're you're in a place that there's not very many mountains or hills, just like in the dead of desert, it gets really windy and it blows up a lot of the the dirt and the sand and and so that can get kind of intense when your face is being pelted with with sand.
So luckily, the weather in Roncagua is actually really even. It never gets too cold and never gets too hot. I think I underestimated how cold it would get though, so be sure to still pack warmly. I didn't even bring a coat. I regret it a lot. You'll definitely want a coat. It can get pretty chilly. It'll never snow, but it will get pretty close to that point. In fact, it has snowed there once, but it was the first time in like some odd number of decades. So crazy weather, fires for sure. There was a huge fire, like legendarily big. It was a national state of emergency right by one of my areas, and it was a big ordeal. I mean, there was a lot of evacuations.
So Santiago is right on the edge of the desert. Like for example, if you go just outside of Santiago to the north, you get into the Alicama desert. So for Santiago, for a little over half of the year, it is hot and there's not a single cloud in the sky. But for the rest of the year, once you get into winter, it does cool down a lot and it can get very cold. So it is best to bring some really nice jackets and a good coat. It rains a lot in the city during the winter, and it hardly ever snows, except one time it did snow. It snowed about an inch, but everybody was freaking out, but it was gone by the end of the day.
One time it rained so hard I got super wet.
Both winters that I was in Santiago, there was a lot of flooding in the streets. We had rivers running in the streets. Just because it is more of a desert-arid environment, they don't have a lot of infrastructure for a lot of water. So although it doesn't rain all that much, and sometimes it would rain a decent amount, you would get flooding in the streets.
I'd probably say the craziest weather is during the winter in Chile on the mainland, when it would rain a whole bunch, because their storm drain system isn't very great. It's there, but almost all of them are clogged up with garbage. So whenever it rains, the streets turn into rivers, literal rivers. I have videos from my mission of me trying to bike through the street, and my companion is just laughing at me as I'm trying to go through the river that used to be the road. So yeah, definitely crazy weather would be when it rains a lot and the roads turn into rivers.
Sometimes it'll rain pretty hard but for the most part the most annoying thing is in the mornings it's like overcast and cloudy and cold but then afternoon the sun comes out and it's really hot and then at nights it's cold again so it's kind of hard to dress and stuff because just bring stuff where you can wear layers.
Santiago is kind of a bull, it has a bad inversion in the winter, so it gets really cold. And the houses are made of just cement, and the floors as well are just tile. So houses are really cold, especially in the summer, but in the winter they're like, winter you're always cold, but they heated these houses a lot and it just it gets really humid in the houses, in the summer they're cold and you walk outside and it's blazing hot. So you get used to like that back and forth weather feeling. It rains and then the streets will flood pretty bad, pretty fun, but that's about it.