The eastern region of Cuba could experience heavy rainfall, even locally intense, starting this Friday and continuing for the next few days, with a risk of flooding in several areas, according to forecasts by meteorologist José Rubiera and warnings released this Friday by the official newspaper Venceremos.
Carlos Román González, director of the Guantánamo Meteorological Center, explained that a trough located southeast of the Gulf of Mexico is approaching the eastern part of the country, and in combination with two low-pressure areas, is enhancing the conditions for the occurrence of heavy rainfall.
According to the specialist, the rains would start this Friday and be more intense on Saturday and Sunday, also driven by a very humid airflow from the south. While precipitation is expected throughout the province of Guantánamo, the southern slopes may experience a greater impact.
Román warned that accumulations could exceed 100 millimeters in certain regions. He also alerted about the risk of river flooding due to runoff in mountainous areas and possible landslides, dangers that are exacerbated by the province's topography.
For his part, Rubiera explained on Thursday on his YouTube channel that a combination of atmospheric systems and a flow of moist air could lead to heavy and even intense rainfall in the central Caribbean, from eastern Cuba to the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and the Bahamas.
The meteorologist pointed out that the GFS and European models agree in predicting significant rainfall for the area, although they differ in the distribution of the rains. Some scenarios show high accumulations in the south of Haiti and in the eastern region of Cuba.
Rubiera insisted that the accumulated forecasts for the next three days still have limited reliability, so he recommended monitoring the evolution of the weather situation in the coming days. Nonetheless, he warned that locally intense rainfall could occur, capable of causing flooding.
In Guantánamo, the First Secretary of the Communist Party, Yoel Pérez García, urged municipal authorities to stay informed and adopt the necessary measures to prevent damage and emergencies in light of the potential for rising rivers and landslides in mountainous areas.
So far, the two sources consulted have not reported any declaration of an Informative Phase by Civil Defense for the eastern provinces.
The Informative Phase is the first level of the Civil Defense protocol, below the Alert Phase and the Alarm Phase. It involves increasing surveillance and informing the population, but it does not yet equate to a general evacuation order.
The eastern region of Cuba carries an accumulated vulnerability: just a year ago, the hurricane Melissa made landfall as a category three in Santiago de Cuba with winds of 195 km/h.
Its passage left damages in more than 116,000 homes and affected over 3.5 million people residing in eastern Cuba. The region has not yet completed its recovery.
In recent weeks, the region has experienced episodes of flooding: at the beginning of October, firefighters rescued 11 people trapped by the rising waters of the Cayo Guan River in the municipality of Moa, including two minors. Additionally, the Miel River in Baracoa has once again left areas submerged.
This episode also falls within the warnings from experts about a 2026-2027 winter characterized by intense rainfall and frequent cold fronts as a consequence of the El Niño phenomenon, with a 63% chance of reaching a very strong intensity between next November and January 2027.
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