Mexico governor blames climate change for freak summer hailstorm that hit Guadalajara

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Freak hailstorm buries Mexican city of Guadalajara

Summer storm swamps streets in 5 feet of hail.

A freak summer hailstorm struck the Mexican city of Guadalajara early Sunday, burying cars and blanketing streets in a thick layer of ice.

Enrique Alfaro Ramirez, the governor of the Mexican state of Jalisco, blamed climate change for the weird weather event.

Local newspaper El Informador reported that more than 1 meter (3.28 feet) of ice covered parts of the city. In addition to burying cars, the storm damaged 457 homes in Guadalajara and the district of Tlaquepaque.

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Soldiers joined city workers in the cleanup effort.

A policeman stands next to vehicles buried in hail in the eastern area of Guadalajara, Jalisco state, Mexico, on June 30, 2019. (ULISES RUIZ/AFP/Getty Images)

In a tweet, which has been translated from Spanish, Alfaro explained that he had never seen anything like the hail storm before, noting that a hail layer of “tens of centimeters” blanketed parts of the city.

In a video, Alfaro also suggested that the freak hailstorm was the result of climate change. "This is a natural phenomenon that we had not seen before," he added. In subsequent tweets, Alfaro showed the city’s cleanup operation.

Citing Guadalajara Mayor Ismael del Toro, El Informador reported that 10 people had been treated for hypothermia following the storm.

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Sky News reports that the storm followed days of warm and dry weather, with temperatures hitting 90 degrees.

Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers