Sandra Yanira Martinez Tobar

Sandra Yanira Martinez Tobar was born in San Salvador in 1959. Her interest in meteorology began when she was 19, through a scholarship programme promoted by the National Meteorological Service in partnership with the University of El Salvador, from which she graduated.

She went on to become a fellow of the World Meteorological Organization, where she specialised in aeronautical, hydrological and maritime meteorology. She also studied with the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and was certified and accredited as a meteorologist and hydrologist by the United States Department of Commerce. Further training took her to Spain, Guatemala and the United States.

Martinez began working in meteorology around 1980 and is regarded as the first woman to join El Salvador's National Meteorological Service, which later became part of the Environmental Observatory of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MARN). She worked for 19 years in aeronautical meteorology at Comalapa and Ilopango airports. In total she served 23 years under the agriculture ministry and 17 years at the environment ministry.

In 2017 she became a trending topic on Salvadoran social media when users compared her with television presenters reading weather reports. She took the episode with grace and used it to explain the academic and professional training behind her work. She retired on 6 December 2019, at about the age of 60.

After retiring she gave interviews, first on the Pencho y Aida programme on Radio Fuego, describing mistreatment she said she had experienced at work over almost four decades. She also revealed that a 100 year historical archive of El Salvador's weather records had been sold as recycled paper. President Nayib Bukele responded by dismissing the then meteorology manager. In 2020 she returned to public view as a weather presenter on Noticiero El Salvador.

In the legislative and municipal elections of 28 February 2021 she was elected a deputy of the Legislative Assembly for the department of La Libertad on the Nuevas Ideas ticket, serving from 1 May 2021 to 1 May 2024. On 6 May 2021 she became president of the Assembly's Environment Commission. She did not initially secure a place for the 2024 election, but after the candidacies of Rebeca Santos and Erick Garcia were disqualified in August 2023, Nuevas Ideas named her as a replacement candidate for La Libertad. She was not re-elected.

Martinez spoke publicly about her commitment to the recognition of working women in science, which she described as one of her reasons for retiring when she did. Little else about her private life was documented in public sources.

Sandra Yanira Martinez Tobar died on Sunday 25 October 2026. Her death was announced by the Nuevas Ideas party and reported by Salvadoran media, including El Metropolitano Digital. The place and cause of death were not made public, and no funeral details had been reported at the time of writing. Coverage of her death emphasised her four decades in meteorology and her part in opening the profession to women.

Martinez is remembered as a pioneer of Salvadoran meteorology, the first woman in the National Meteorological Service and a specialist in aeronautical, maritime and hydrological forecasting at a time when the field in El Salvador was dominated by men. Her warnings about the loss of the country's historical weather archive drew national attention to the care of scientific records, and her later work on television and in the Legislative Assembly brought a trained scientist's voice to public discussion of weather, climate and the environment.