Classic Cars in Cuba

I first heard about classic cars in Cuba when a teacher from my school went there and made a presentation about his trip and showed it to my school. When we first got to Cuba I noticed classic cars right away. My English teacher shared an article about classic cars and why there are so many in Cuba. One of the main reasons is because there were many trade restrictions after the Cuban revolution in 1959. No new cars were being shipped from America and it was too expensive to bring in cars from different countries. Since the revolution there have been some cars shipped from China and Russia.

Tornado hits Havana

We got to Havana, Cuba, Sunday morning after a red eye flight. We settled into our apartment, went out for some dinner, and got back to the apartment. After we got back it started to rain. Then after an hour the power went out and it started to get very windy. The windows and shutters wouldn’t stay shut and were swinging around and water was pouring through the windows, even the ones that were closes. There were big puddles in the living room and bedrooms. It wasn’t until the next day we realized it was a tornado that hit Havana because we got texts from friends and family asking if we were okay.

After the storm it was a sunny view.
During the storm these were the shutters that were flapping around and we couldn't get the window shut.
We couldn't see the tall buildings in the background because of the rain.

The tornado hit south of where we are staying but we still got high winds and lots of rain in a very short time. It killed 3 people and over 170 were injured. Buildings collapsed and cars were flipped. Tornadoes are very rare in Cuba, this was the strongest one since 1940. The wind speed got up to about 320km/h. Tornadoes are classified into 5 different categories, F-0 through F-5. F-0 are the mildest and F-5 are the most dangerous. The tornado that hit Havana was a F-3. It was a very exciting welcome to Cuba.

Sources and storm photos:

• Washington Post
• The Guardian