In the early hours of this Sunday, Alex was formed, the first tropical storm of the current cyclonic season in the Atlantic, the result of a zone of low pressures that affected Cuba and Florida in the last few days.
“After crossing over the Florida peninsula and emerging into the Atlantic Ocean, the low pressure area showed signs of better organization, concentrating cloudy areas with showers and thunderstorms near its central region, which now allows it to be defined as a tropical storm. Alex”, reported the Cuban Institute of Meteorology (Insmet).
The entity itself predicted that in the next 12 to 24 hours the storm “will maintain a course between the northeast and the east-northeast, gaining a little more in intensity, to begin to gradually weaken as of Monday.”
The National Forecast Center has issued the first Tropical Cyclone Warning of the hurricane season on the formation of Tropical Storm ¨Alex¨
More in: https://t.co/CsUXlzgPzo pic.twitter.com/zpTosXH8a5— Forecast Center, Insmet (@cnp_insmet_cuba) June 5, 2022
At 8:00 a.m. (local time), its central region was located in the open waters of the Atlantic Ocean, about 1,020 kilometers west-southwest of Bermuda. It had maximum sustained winds of 85 kilometers per hour and a central pressure of 995 hectoPascal. It is moving northeast at a rate of 35 km/h. in accordance with the US National Hurricane Center.
Although it no longer represents a direct danger for Cuba, the Insmet specified that despite its distance “the outermost bands of cloudy with showers, rains and electrical storms will continue to affect the national territory, mainly the central region.”
“These precipitations will be strong and intense in some localities in this part of the country, with emphasis on mountainous areas and on the southern coast,” added the Cuban center in its report, in which it warned that “according to the degree of saturation of the soils , we must continue to pay attention to the hydrometeorological situation in each territory”.
The heavy rains of recent days on the Island as a result of the low pressure zone formed by the remnants of Hurricane Agatha —which affected Mexico days ago— left a balance of at least three dead, a hundred landslides and other damage to infrastructure, crops and power lines. In addition, they caused flooding and severe local storms in parts of the west and center of the country.
