Benito Viñes was born September 19, 1837, in Spain and was ordained a priest in 1869. In 1870, he was sent to Havana, Cuba, where he directed the Observatory at Belen in Cuba for 24 years.

Throughout his years in Cuba, Fr. Viñes wrote two books and various articles about climate study and established empirical laws about the path of hurricanes.

On September 11, 1875, Fr. Viñes was the first person to predict the arrival of a hurricane. It was the first weather forecast recorded in the Western Hemisphere, and it was made a day before a hurricane hit the southern coast of Cuba. Thanks to this, many lives were saved, and he became known as "Father Hurricane."

As a result, he is credited with establishing hurricane forecasting as a practice and publishing the first hurricane advisory in the history of meteorology. He invented an inner-phase cyclonoscope that assists meteorologists in locating the eye of a hurricane.

He devoted much of his life to the study of weather phenomena at the Colegio Belén in Cuba and died in Havana on July 23, 1893.

Belen Jesuit has continued the traditions of Fr. Viñes by being one of the few secondary schools in the country to have an observatory.

In 2012, in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Belen Observatory in Miami, it was renamed the Fr. Benito Viñes, S.J. Observatory.

On the 120th anniversary of Fr. Viñes’ death in 2013, the Miami-Dade County Commission renamed the corner of Sixth Street and 128th Avenue in Southwest Miami as "Padre Benito Viñes SJ Way."

He is posthumously inducted into the Belen Hall of Fame, class of 2023.