A storm that swept Brazil's southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul, in the early hours of Monday (Sept 21), with torrential rain and gusts reaching 126.7 km/h, has left four people dead and one woman missing, according to the state Civil Defense authority. The toll rose on Tuesday (Sept 22) after firefighters found the bodies of a man and a child in the Serra Gaúcha highlands, G1 and CNN Brasil report. Severe weather alerts remain in force until Wednesday.
The first death was confirmed by civil police in Pelotas, where a motorcyclist died after hitting a downed wire lying across the road. The other cases are in Caxias do Sul, in the highlands. In the Parada Cristal area, a car was swept away by a flash flood; a man was rescued, but a 13-year-old girl, a 4-year-old child and a 43-year-old woman went missing. In the De Lazzer neighborhood, a man cleaning a storm drain gallery was also dragged away by the water. By Tuesday, with the bodies recovered, only the 43-year-old woman remained unaccounted for, and firefighters continue the search.
Damage across nearly 200 municipalities
On Monday, the state Civil Defense counted 119 municipalities with storm damage and 485,170 people affected, plus 701 residents displaced but staying with relatives or friends, 101 in public shelters, 1,009 houses stripped of their roofs, 273 damaged and 18 destroyed. The number of hit cities, which stood at 64 in the first tally reported by Agência Brasil, 49 of them hit mainly by the winds, reached 194 in a later survey, when the agency began counting 1,099 people out of their homes, 728 of them in shelters, CNN Brasil reports.
The damage varies sharply across the state. Caxias do Sul recorded 159.4 mm of rain in a single day. In Hulha Negra, gusts hit 126.7 km/h, and in the city of Rio Grande, 113.7 km/h, according to the municipal civil defense. In Nova Santa Rita, 400 houses lost their roofs and city hall suspended classes. In Igrejinha, the Paranhana River reached 3.5 meters, one stage below full flood alert, and more than 100 houses were unroofed. Pelotas woke to torn-off roofs and fallen trees.
Alerts run through Wednesday
Brazil's national weather service, the Inmet, issued a high-danger storm alert for the state, warning of rain above 60 mm per hour or 100 mm per day, winds over 100 km/h and possible hail. Civil Defense expects another 50 to 80 mm in 12 hours over the state's North, Vales (valleys) and Serra regions, and storms with gusts above 90 km/h in the northwest, north and northeast through Wednesday. Streams and rivers are rising in the Guaíba basin, the watershed that drains much of the state toward Porto Alegre, with risks of flash floods and rivers bursting their banks.
The area of highest flood risk is the Taquari Valley, one of the regions hit hardest by the floods that devastated the state in May 2024. There, eight municipalities (Arroio do Meio, Lajeado, Encantado, Santa Tereza, Cruzeiro do Sul, Roca Sales, Muçum and Estrela) received cell broadcast alerts, emergency messages pushed directly to phones, along with official flood maps. Civil Defense advises residents not to return to evacuated areas until officials declare them safe, and to take pets along when leaving. Rio Grande do Sul has been hit by repeated extreme rain events since 2023, and the phone alert system is part of the response built after the 2024 disaster.