A severe local storm struck the city of Bayamo, the capital of the province Granma, on Wednesday afternoon, leaving streets flooded, fallen trees, and power outages, according to reports from the Provincial Meteorological Center and local media.
According to specialists from the Provincial Meteorological Center, the phenomenon was characterized by heavy rainfall, strong winds, and hail in some areas of the city.
One of the most striking aspects of the event was its intermittent behavior. According to journalist Humberto Zamora Fajardo from Radio Ciudad Monumento, "the remarkable thing about this new weather phenomenon is that it occurred in phases; just when it seemed to have passed, strong winds and lightning returned, and at the beginning, there was still sunshine over large areas of the city."
The images shared by CNC TV Granma show streets completely flooded with murky water between 30 and 60 centimeters deep, people riding bicycles and tricycles through the inundated roads, and fallen trees and branches on the pavement.
Preliminarily, Radio Ciudad Monumento reported that "the same damages as before have not been reported, but there are indeed floods in some streets and, in other cases, the gusts have intensified the damage to waterproof tarps on tall buildings, especially in the Antonio Guiteras neighborhood."
At the close of the reports, the situation in Bayamo remained critical: "It is still raining in Bayamo, there is a lack of electrical service, and there are strong electrical discharges," Zamora Fajardo warned.
The event raises particular concern as it occurs just 16 days after another severe local storm that struck Bayamo on May 18, with winds exceeding 100 km/h, hail the size of chickpeas, and 81.5 mm of rain in just one hour.
That first event caused damage to 85 homes and 19 state centers and institutions, including the Mártires de Barbados Stadium, the Guajiro Natural Cultural Recreational Center, and the Fernández de Castro Park, with no loss of human lives.
Bayamo has a recurring history of such phenomena. In August 2025, a hailstorm dumped ice chunks the size of golf balls on the city, and in July 2020, another severe local storm left 36 homes damaged, with two total collapses and 13 roofs lost.
The recurrence of these events highlights the city's vulnerability to extreme weather phenomena, exacerbated by the deterioration of urban drainage, the poor condition of buildings, and the precariousness of the electrical system.
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