Hurricane Oscar makes landfall in the northeast corner of Cuba with category 1

He Hurricane Oscarcategory 1 (out of 5) on the Saffir-Simpson scale, made landfall in Cuba this Sunday around 6:10 p.m. local time (22:10 GMT), in the vicinity of the city of Baracoa, in the northeastern corner of the island, reported the Meteorological Institute (Insmet) of that country.

The Insmet, which has already measured gusts of 116 kilometers per hour due to Oscarexpects to collect in some mountainous points in eastern Cuba between 100 and 200 milliliters (liters per square meter) and to register winds of up to 120 kilometers per hour.

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Strong storm surges are also expected in Guantánamo, Holguín and Las Tunas, as well as coastal flooding “moderate to strong in low areas of this coastline, including the Baracoa seawall.”

The authorities have decreed the cyclonic alarm phase for the provinces of Guantánamo, Santiago de Cuba, Holguín, Granma and Las Tunas, while keeping Camagüey in the alert phase and Ciego de Ávila in the information phase.

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For its part, the United States National Hurricane Center, based in Miami (Florida), reported that the hurricane made landfall in the province of Guantánamo.

New hurricane

Óscar’s arrival takes place just over two days after Cuba suffered a total blackout from which it has barely begun to recover in a very incipient and unstable way.

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Due to this blackout and Hurricane Oscar, the Cuban Government has suspended non-essential administrative and teaching activity throughout the country until Wednesday.

The authorities also urged the population to stay informed about the evolution of this system through the national media and to comply with the instructions of local authorities.

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Oscar became a category 1 hurricane this Saturday after experiencing accelerated intensification and has already affected the Turks and Caicos Islands and the southeastern Bahamas.

It is the fifteenth tropical storm of the current hurricane season in the Atlantic, although the US National Hurricane Center has described it as “little”.

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The US and Cuban meteorological services warned months ago that this Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to November 30, was going to be especially active.