Tropical Storm Oscar spins toward Bermuda after slamming Cuba

AccuWeather

Tropical Storm Oscar is expected to avoid the biggest population centers in the Bahamas and keep going through the Atlantic, bringing heavy rain to Bermuda later this week.

Transcript

00:00Oscar is still spinning. This is a pretty disembodied storm. It's really

00:03been ravaged by the mountains of eastern Cuba that have weakened the storm, but

00:08we're still dealing with max sustained winds of 40 MPH. Barometric pressure

00:11has been rising a bit as the storm weakens, but we're still facing a lot

00:14of impacts here, and it's a dangerous storm in the area around eastern Cuba

00:19because of rain. There will be a storm surge for some of the southeastern

00:23Bahamas with an area seeing 1 to 3 ft storm surge here. Keep in mind, most of

00:28the population of the Bahamas, about 285,000 people are in the area near

00:32Nassau and then another another 30,000 up your Grand Bahama Island and

00:36Freeport. So that leaves very little population in the southeastern Bahamas

00:41where this storm is going to be tracking. Still, there are some

00:43settlements there, but still overall limited impacts to human life in the

00:48path of this storm here for the southeastern Bahamas, with gusts of wind

00:52generally 40, maybe a little stronger than 40 MPH. This storm has been

00:55weakened because it's interacted with the mountains here over Cuba. But with

00:59that said, we've seen tremendous amounts of rain in Cuba, and that's the real

01:02danger here. 8 to 12 inches of rain in these mountainous areas, and we could

01:06conceivably see four inches in some of the Bahamas there, southeastern

01:09Bahamas, largely missing Nassau and Freeport, thankfully. So this storm,

01:15Oscar, does have an accurate, a real impact scale rating of two for the

01:18Caribbean, mainly with the eastern end of Cuba in mind. And we picked the

01:22storyline up here as the storm is going to be pulling north, and as Oscar

01:26drifts north, it's going to pass very close to Bermuda, and we're forecasting

01:302 to 4 inches of rain into Bermuda. So that will be a concern over the

01:35islands there. Now, Bermuda is an area where we can handle storms like this

01:39pretty well. In fact, they actually capture the rain on the rooftops, and

01:44that is something that they leverage there to their own use after the rain

01:48falls. So 2 to 4 inches in Bermuda, something to keep an eye on. The center

01:51of the storm will probably pass barely west of or near the islands, as we

01:55watch this overall steering flow. Again, some impacts coming to Bermuda, but

01:59it will be limited in overall impact. The wind's 40 to 60 miles per hour

02:04there as the storm races past the islands. But we do have some big

02:08concerns still in the southeastern part of the nation here, as we've been

02:12dealing with a lot of impacts associated with, again, pretty, not

02:16just significant hurricanes, but major hurricanes that led to devastation and

02:20a lot of damage. So, Damien, we're very concerned about the recovery that

02:23continues here. The weather is cooperating, but we know it's going to

02:27get invariably chillier as we get into winter, and some are not going to be

02:30under a sturdy roof by that point. That's right. The other issue that

02:34we're gonna be watching is, yes, even though we're seeing high pressure that's

02:37going to dominate the forecast, which is gonna mean lots of sunshine to help

02:40out with those recovery efforts, it also means that we're gonna see dry

02:43conditions. And some of these areas across the East Coast and the Northeast

02:46have been seeing the driest October of all time. So we definitely need to get

02:51some moisture out here. We definitely need to get some rainfall. But in the

02:53meantime, at least here for the East Coast, not a whole lot of rainfall to

02:56speak of here as we head throughout the next 24 to 48 hours.

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