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Hacía mucho frío cuando llegamos al glaciar esta mañana.

Hacía mucho frío cuando llegamos al glaciar esta mañana.
It was very cold when we arrived at the glacier this morning.
From Lesson 290:Past vs. experiences (alguna vez)·Spanish (Latin America)

Questions & Answers about Hacía mucho frío cuando llegamos al glaciar esta mañana.

Why is llegamos in the preterite rather than the present perfect (hemos llegado) if it happened "this morning"?
In Latin American Spanish, the preterite is used for actions that are entirely completed, even if they happened recently today. Because "this morning" is a finished timeframe, we use the preterite llegamos. While speakers in Spain might use the present perfect (hemos llegado) for events that happened today, Latin American speakers strongly prefer the preterite for closed events.
Why do we use hacía (imperfect) for the weather but llegamos (preterite) for arriving?
The imperfect (hacía) is used to set the background scene; it was already cold before they arrived and continued to be cold. The preterite (llegamos) is used for the specific, one-time action of arriving that happened during that background setting.
Why does the sentence use hacía mucho frío instead of saying estaba muy frío?
In Spanish, the verb hacer (to do/make) is the standard way to describe general weather conditions, so it literally translates to "it was making much cold." Because frío acts as a noun (coldness) in this expression, you must use the adjective mucho (a lot of) rather than the adverb muy (very).
Wait, isn't llegamos the present tense?
It can be both! For regular -ar verbs, the nosotros form is exactly the same in the present tense and the preterite tense. You have to rely on context clues, like the past-tense verb hacía and the time phrase esta mañana, to know it means "we arrived" rather than "we arrive."

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