Tropical Storm Oscar drenches Cuba, with sights set on a Bahamas landfall next
Tropical Storm Oscar dropped nearly a foot of rain as it crawled over Cuba on Monday, and it’s set to drench the Bahamas next.
As of Monday’s 5 p.m. update, the National Hurricane Center said the storm was getting ripped apart over Cuba’s mountainous terrain, doubling the tiny storm’s size and weakening it. By the evening, Oscar’s tropical-storm-force winds extended 90 miles from the center and its maximum sustained winds hovered at 40 mph.
The hurricane center said Oscar is expected to maintain tropical storm strength as it exits Cuba later Monday night. Its next stop, according to the latest forecast, is the southern and eastern Bahamas on Tuesday. It could strengthen a bit, forecasters said, but it’s still expected to be a tropical storm when it strikes.
While small, Oscar was expected to be a very wet storm, dropping 7 to 14 inches of rain across Cuba and up to 20 inches in some spots. That’s enough to set off dangerous mudslides and flash flooding in a nation already struggling to keep the lights on.
An early report showed that more than 10 inches of rain had already fallen in Cuba’s province of Guantanamo.
Oscar could drop 3 to 5 inches in the Bahamas, enough to cause flash flooding.
Over the weekend, Oscar abruptly became the tenth hurricane of the season. On Friday evening, the hurricane center gave the system a low chance of developing, but by mid-morning Saturday, Oscar was a Category 1 hurricane.
On Sunday, it made landfall on the Bahamas’ Great Inagua Island and made landfall again Sunday evening along the coast of eastern Cuba before weakening to a tropical storm.
This story was originally published October 21, 2024 at 10:59 AM.
