Hurricane Rafael (2012)

Hurricane Rafael was a long-lived category 1 hurricane that produced minor damage in the northeastern Caribbean Sea in mid-October 2012. The seventeenth named storm and ninth hurricane of the 2012 hurricane season, Rafael originated from a tropical wave roughly 230 mi (370 km) south-southeast of Saint Croix on October 12; because the system already contained tropical storm-force winds, it skipped tropical depression status. Though initially disorganized due to moderate wind shear, a subsequent decrease allowed for shower and thunderstorm activity to develop in earnest by October 14, 2012. While moving north-northwestward the following morning, Rafael intensified into a Category 1 hurricane. A cold front off the East Coast of the United States caused the system to turn northward and eventually northeastward by October 16, 2012, at which time Rafael attained its peak intensity with maximum sustained winds of 90 mph (150 km/h). As the cyclone entered a more stable atmosphere and tracked across increasingly cooler sea surface temperatures, it began extratropical transition, a process the system completed by the following afternoon. However, Rafael's extratropical remnant persisted for another nine days, with the storm looping around a larger extratropical low over the north-central Atlantic, before turning southeastward and then eastward. Rafael's remnant later made landfall on Portugal on October 26, before dissipating later that day.