Severe convective storms are responsible for producing hazardous weather phenomena, such as tornadoes, damaging winds and large hail, that pose a threat to life and property in many parts of the world, including the La Plata Basin in subtropical South America. In this preliminary study, covariate quantities that describe regimes of severe weather environments within the CAPE and vertical wind shear parameter space are computed from atmospheric profiles obtained from the ERA5 gridded data at 6-hr intervals for a 7-year period (2013-2019) in the La Plata Basin. These covariates are utilized to assess the magnitude of atmospheric ingredients known to favor the development of severe convective storms and to determine days with atmospheric conditions conducive to these storms. Following similar studies conducted for different regions around the world (Brooks et al., 2003; Trapp et al., 2009; Allen et al., 2011 and Glazer et al., 2020), distinct threshold values for the covariate quantity that multiplies mixed-layer CAPE and 0-6km bulk wind difference are assessed as discriminators for severe weather environments. An evaluation is conducted on how CAPE and shear covariates computed from ERA5 represent the seasonal march of severe weather hot spots in the La Plata Basin as compared to available short-term climatologies based on actual soundings, ground reports of severe weather, and remote sensing products.