The Pico San Juan radar reaches its 35th year of operation this Tuesday. Located 1,142 meters above sea level, at the highest point of the Guamuhaya massif, the facility becomes one of the most important stations of the meteorological service in Cuba.
The electron beamThe magnetic field of Pico San Juan extends in a radius of 500 kilometers, and covers almost the entire Greater Island of the Antilles and its collective makes observations approximately every 10 minutes, which are very useful for the Cienfuegos Meteorological Center, the Institute of Meteorology and other institutions in the country and even beyond our borders.
Lázaro Alfredo Moreno Rodríguez, main specialist, explains that his workers have the preparation and skills required to work in this place, whether under normal conditions or extreme weather events.
Valuable and precise information is provided by the so-called “steel eye of the Cienfuegos mountains”. “Our work is essential when there is a threat of hurricanes and intense rains, due to the geographical location of the radar and its range,” he says.
The work system is made up of two groups, each one remains for a consecutive week working 24 hours a day.
On June 11, 1989, Rosa Elena Simeón, president of the Cuban Academy of Sciences at that time, cut the ribbon that inaugurated this radar, remodeled and modernized in 2000 at the idea of the leader of the Cuban Revolution, who after the The scourge of Hurricane Lili in 1996 urged the nation to be provided with systems of this type with more efficient forecasting technologies.
Today the Cuban archipelago has a completely automated national network, made up of eight radars, that covers the country and adjacent seas.
