Right now, people in Argentina are experiencing the dog days of summer with the hottest temperatures occurring annually during the months of January and February. For instance, the average high temperatures for Buenos Aires, the capitol of Argentina, during the months of January and February is in the middle 80’s, while average highs in July are only in the 50’s.

Of course, when we are looking for a cool down here in Kentuckiana, we look for a cold front to sweep in from the north. In South America, a cold front actually moves in from the south. While cold air originates over Siberia or Northern Canada in the Northern Hemisphere, south of the equator, cold air originates over the coldest continent on the planet, Antarctica. On July 21st of 1983, the temperature in Vostok, Antarctica dropped to an absurdly cold -129°F, the lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth! Fortunately for the folks of Argentina, air that cold doesn’t reach the South American continent because of the modifying effects of the Southern Ocean, which separates the two continents.

As an area of high pressure rotates clockwise and a low-pressure system rotates counter-clockwise north of the equator, the opposite is true for the Southern Hemisphere where cyclones rotate clockwise and their high-pressure counterparts rotate in a counter-clockwise fashion. There is one constant between the two hemispheres though, that is that low pressure brings unsettled weather and high pressure brings sunshine.