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By Aliss Higham
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The path of Hurricane Rafael has detoured significantly from forecasters projections, changing course from the Gulf states of Louisiana and Mississippi toward the Texas-Mexico border.
After rapidly intensifying earlier this week, Rafael made landfall in Cuba on Wednesday as a Category 3 hurricane in the western province of Artemisa, near the capital Havana, at around 4:15 p.m. CST, bringing torrential rains and 115 mph winds that caused a countrywide power outage. By 10 p.m. the hurricane had downgraded to a Category 2.
Prior to the storm's arrival in the late afternoon, over 70,000 residents were evacuated from their homes due to alerts of potential storm surges, flash flooding, and mudslides.
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The storm was originally forecast to continue traveling in a northwesterly direction after passing over Cuba, but has now changed track, moving westward toward the Texas-Mexico border and then potentially to the south, before downgrading to a tropical storm by the early hours of Monday morning.
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A spaghetti model produced by Tropical Tidbits, a weather analysis and forecasting site, showed the storm would either continue its northwestern track before pivoting in a northeasterly direction or head west-southwest toward Mexico. A more recent update from the forecaster indicated the storm is most likely to continue westward before dipping into the southern Gulf toward the central Mexico coast.
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"A turn toward the west at a slower forward speed is expected later today, with this general motion continuing through Saturday," the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said in its latest update issued at 4 a.m. EST on Thursday.
"On the forecast track, Rafael is expected to continue to move away from western Cuba over the southeastern Gulf of Mexico this morning. Rafael is then forecast to move over the southern Gulf of Mexico for the next few days."
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"Interests in the southern and southwestern Gulf of Mexico should monitor the progress of this system," the forecaster said.
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The storm is not expected to make landfall in the U.S. and Mexico as it will lose intensity in the coming days, with the NHC saying Rafael is likely to "meander" over the south-central Gulf of Mexico into the weekend through early next week.
There is currently only one tropical storm warning currently in place for the Dry Tortugas, around 70 miles west of the Florida Keys.
Historically, hurricanes in November have seldom made landfall in the United States, and are rarer at the end of the season due to a decline in favorable conditions for the formation of atmospheric storms.
Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows that out of 287 hurricanes recorded to have struck the mainland U.S. since 1851, only four occurred in November. Three of these impacted Florida, while one hit North Carolina.
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