A rare November hurricane made landfall in western Cuba as a Category 3 storm Wednesday and continued to move slowly toward the northwest Thursday morning. Volunteer ham radio operators were there to provide surface reports to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
Hurricane Rafael left Cuba’s 10 million residents without power and on Thursday afternoon was a Category 2 storm moving away from Cuba and heading northwest towards the Gulf of Mexico. Initial predictions showed the storm could have been headed for Florida and Louisiana, but all watches and warnings in those areas have been discontinued.
The Hurricane Watch Net (HWN), the VoIP Hurricane Net, and WX4NHC, the amateur radio station at the National Hurricane Center (NHC), were activated until Wednesday night but are now secured and continuing to monitor the storm.
The NHC predicts that Rafael should remain a hurricane for the next couple of days as it moves into a drier air mass in the south-central Gulf of Mexico this weekend and early next week.