MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

US, Cuba good weather companions

The US and Cuban governments avoid talking politics or religion, but as with every strained relationship, the weather is usually a safe topic.

For decades, the two countries have quietly worked together to track tropical storms and hurricanes in hopes of saving their citizens' lives.

The two sides share meteorological data on storms. Cuban forecasters have received training in the US. And earlier this week, eight US Air Force C-130 planes crossed into Cuban airspace to gather information on Tropical Storm Ernesto's wind speed, centre and other information.

In an unusual public acknowledgment yesterday, the National Hurricane Centre commended Fidel Castro's communist government for its assistance.

"Special thanks to the government of Cuba for permitting the recon aircraft (to) fly right up to their coastline to gather this critical weather data," forecaster Stacy Stewart wrote in an advisory.

Cuba has long pumped money into meteorological research. In 1900, Cuban meteorologists tried to warn US weather officials of the danger of a hurricane that was moving into the Gulf of Mexico. Their predictions were dismissed by the US and the storm killed at least 8,000 people in Galveston, Texas, according to Erik Larson, author of Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History.

Castro took power in 1959, and contacts between Cuba and the US are sharply restricted. But the two countries have worked together to track storms for the past 30 years, said Lixion Avila, a forecaster at the US hurricane centre and a native of Cuba.

Cuban weather specialists even attend the Florida centre's training sessions, he said. People say, "?Oh, you talk to Cuba,'" Avila said. "It surprises me that people are more interested in the gossip and politics rather than the number of people we are saving in the US and Cuba by working together."

José Rubiera, head of Cuba's Meteorological Institute, told reporters in Havana in May that the cooperation "is not only desirable, it is necessary to save human lives."

Still, the issue of airspace has been tricky. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the hurricane centre, has long been allowed to fly its WP-3D Orion planes over Cuban airspace, but it has only two of them, limiting the amount of time it can fly during a storm.

The US State Department, on the other hand, was skittish about flying near the Cuban coast following several confrontations between the two countries, including the 1996 killing of four members of the Cuban-exile group Brothers to the Rescue. The Cuban military shot their planes down, alleging the pilots violated national air space.