Storm Eta pounds Cuba with torrential rain on track to Florida

HAVANA, (Reuters) - Tropical storm Eta pounded central Cuba with torrential rain yesterday, bursting the banks of rivers and causing flash flooding in some towns before exiting via the island’s northern coast and churning on track to the Florida keys.

Tens of thousands of Cubans had evacuated ahead of Eta’s landfall early yesterday, state-run media reported, after the storm killed dozens in flooding and landslides across Central America and southern Mexico.

Packing maximum sustained winds of 95 kilometers (59 miles) per hour, Eta dumped up to 328 millimeters (12.9 inches) of rain on central Cuba, Cuba’s meteorology office said, warning the ground would struggle to absorb this as it was already saturated due to recent heavy rains. State-run media posted images of people wading knee-deep through muddy water in some smaller towns. But several residents of the cities closest to Eta’s path, Sancti Spiritus and Ciego de Avila, told Reuters they had not seen any flooding there yet.

Still, the outer bands of the uneven weather system would continue to lash Cuba, moving from east to west, in the days ahead, the office said, with flooding expected in Havana too.

State-run media showed images of workers already out in central Cuba removing fallen trees from roads while the head of Cuba’s Electric Union Jorge Cepero was cited saying there were some outages but the grid did not appear to have been significantly damaged.