What type of disturbance does Effects of Hurricane Matthew in Haiti and have in common?
Effects of Hurricane Matthew in Haiti Hurricane Matthew struck southwestern Haiti near Les Anglais on October 4, 2016, leaving widespread damage in the impoverished nation. Matthew was a late-season Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir–Simpson scale, having formed in the southeastern Caribbean on September 28. The hurricane weakened to Category 4 before making landfall near Les Anglais on October 4, at which time the National Hurricane Center estimated maximum sustained winds of 240 km/h (150 mph). This made it the strongest storm to hit the nation since Hurricane Cleo in 1964, and the third strongest Haitian landfall on record. Hurricane-force winds – 74 mph or greater – affected about 1.125 million people in the country. The Haitian government assessed the death toll at 546, although other sources reported more than three times that figure.
Hurricane Rafael Hurricane Rafael produced minor damage in the northeastern Caribbean Sea in mid-October 2012. The seventeenth named storm and ninth hurricane of the annual 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. 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, 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.