Hurricane Oscar made landfall on the northern coast of eastern Cuba on Sunday evening, the National Hurricane Center said.
The hurricane made landfall in the Cuban province of Guantanamo near the town of Baracoa around 5:50 p.m., the hurricane center said.
The storm weakened, and the center was updated at 8 p.m. with maximum sustained winds of 75 mph. At landfall, Oscar had maximum sustained winds of 80 mph.
The storm “brings hurricane conditions, heavy rainfall and storm surge to parts of eastern Cuba,” the center said.
Oscar, which the National Hurricane Center classified as “compact but powerful,” formed off the coast of the Bahamas on Saturday, prompting a hurricane warning for the northern coast of Cuba’s Holguin and Guantanamo provinces, as far as the island’s eastern tip. , Punta de Maisi.
The hurricane center said the Category 1 storm was moving west-southwest at 6 mph.
“Oscar is expected to weaken as it interacts with mountainous terrain over eastern Cuba, but could become a tropical storm as Oscar moves north of Cuba late Monday and then across the central Bahamas on Tuesday,” the NHC said at 8 p.m. ET. Upgrade.
Cuba is already dealing with outages throughout the day following four major grid failures since Friday.
The country was hit by storm warnings and watches. In addition to hurricane warnings, the northern coast of the Cuban province of Las Dunas was under both a hurricane watch and a tropical storm warning.
A tropical storm warning was in effect for the southeastern Bahamas and the southern coast of Guantanamo, and a tropical storm watch was in effect for the northern coast of Camaguey Province and the central Bahamas.
The center said 6 to 12 inches of rain could fall in eastern Cuba, with up to 18 inches in some places through Wednesday. The southeastern Bahamas could see 3 to 8 inches of rain, and the Turks and Caicos could see 2 to 4 inches by Wednesday morning.
A storm surge of about 1 to 3 feet is expected along Cuba’s northern coast, with “large and destructive waves” near the coast.
