Cubans prepare for long summer after scorching May

HAVANA (Reuters) – If May is any indication, Cuba is in for a long, hot summer, says Osmel Valdés, a horse and buggy driver in Havana.

The 52-year-old Havana resident runs a shuttle service through the suffocating streets of the Cuban capital. Shade is hard to find, so he puts a piece of cardboard on top of his horse between rides to give him a rest.

“This month the heat was terrible,” he says.

Across the island nation, summer temperatures arrived nearly two months early, worsened by hours-long blackouts amid fuel shortages and power plant failures. With nighttime temperatures reaching 27 degrees Celsius (80 degrees Fahrenheit) and daytime temperatures reaching 35 C, there’s no escaping it, locals say.

Meteorologist Ramon Perez, who works for the Cuban Climate Center, says May appears to be the hottest month on the Caribbean island since 1951, when record keeping began here.

“Cuba’s climate is gradually becoming hotter and hotter, especially our summers,” Perez told Reuters.

Last summer was the hottest on record and this one is on its way to equally suffocating temperatures, a phenomenon that the meteorologist attributes to global warming.

The increasing frequency and intensity of severe weather – both on land and in the oceans – is symptomatic of human-made global climate change, which is fueling extremes, experts say.

The El Niño weather pattern, which began to weaken in March, has also fueled above-average land and sea temperatures around the world.

These conditions have left Cuba, which sits at the stormy intersection of the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, exceptionally exposed to a hurricane season that is expected to be among the worst ever.

The Cuban Climate Center says there is an 80% chance of at least one hurricane hitting the island this season.

U.S. government forecasters said last week that up to seven major hurricanes could form in an “extraordinary” Atlantic hurricane season in 2024, starting June 1.

Sultry temperatures combine in Cuba with a devastating economic crisis.

The one-two punch has exhausted Cubans like Nelson Jadier, a sweat-soaked 28-year-old who works in a restaurant wooing customers on the sidewalk.

“May was quite a month for us who have to work on the streets to put food on the table,” said Jadier.

(Reporting by Alien Fernandez, Mario Fuentes and Anett Rios; Editing by Dave Sherwood and Rod Nickel)