Tiny hurricane Oscar made landfall near the city of Baracoa in the Guantanamo province of eastern Cuba on Sunday evening. It has now weakened to a tropical storm and is forecast to move north and east away from Cuba over the next several days.
Weather radar data from Guantanamo Bay shows Oscar has continued to move slowly over eastern Cuba tonight, with heavy rainfall spreading across the region. Oscar’s slow motion will enhance the potential for heavy rainfall, life-threatening flash flooding, and mudslides across eastern Cuba, particularly near higher terrain. According to the National Hurricane Center, there has been notable degradation of Oscar’s inner core structure in recent radar and satellite images, which suggests weakening is occurring due to ongoing land interaction.
Weakening is expected to continue as the inner core structure of Oscar is disrupted by the mountainous terrain of eastern Cuba. The extent of the weakening that occurs, and whether Oscar remains a tropical cyclone (TC) once it emerges off the northern coast of Cuba, is still somewhat uncertain according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC).
For now, the NHC calls for Oscar to re-emerge over water as a tropical storm on Monday and move through the southeastern and central Bahamas on Tuesday. The storm remains tiny, with tropical storm force winds only extending out 45 miles from the center of the storm.
