MIAMI – Powerful Hurricane Rafael slammed into Cuba as a major hurricane on Wednesday. The late-season tropical system has now emerged in the Gulf of Mexico, but the question now turns to where it is going next.
The Fox Forecast Center said that what’s happening now is a rare occurrence. Rafael remains a Category 2 hurricane as of the latest advisory from the National Hurricane Center (NHC). It’s the first Category 2 storm to enter the Gulf of Mexico in November since Hurricane Ida in 2009.
Cuba and parts of the western Caribbean no doubt took the brunt of the storm, which brought damaging, hurricane-force winds, flooding rain, and a potentially deadly storm surge.
A weather station in the Casablanca area of Havana reported a wind gust of 93 mph around the time of Rafael’s landfall on Wednesday afternoon. According to a report from Reuters, Cuba was plunged into darkness due to the impacts of the storm.
All tropical alerts have been dropped and conditions are expected to gradually improve across the region, but millions of people along the U.S. Gulf Coast will be closely monitoring the hurricane’s progress as it slowly churns over the Gulf of Mexico.
As of the latest advisory from the NHC, Rafael is about 200 miles west of Key West, Florida, and moving northwest at 9 mph. Rafael has maximum sustained winds of 105 mph, and it is expected to weaken as the storm meanders in the Gulf of Mexico for the next several days.
The FOX Forecast Center said that computer forecast models strongly agree that Rafael will quickly turn to the west and begin its journey toward the central Gulf of Mexico.
The steering currents assisting Rafael on its path from the Caribbean to the Gulf will begin to drastically weaken, allowing the hurricane to meander in the central Gulf through the weekend and into next week.
The FOX Forecast Center added that there is an increasing consensus that Rafael will slowly move toward Texas or Mexico and steadily weaken as it does so.
However, there is a chance that Rafael could make a turn to the north, but the FOX Forecast Center says that’s looking less likely.
That’s because Rafael will be moving into a very dry atmosphere and strong upper-level headwinds. Due to the hostile atmospheric conditions, Rafael could simply dissipate.
If Rafael survives into next week, the FOX Forecast Center said it could be because it has moved just far enough south in the western Gulf of Mexico to avoid those hostile conditions. In that case, the Mexican coast could be threatened.
