Rafael was moving west across the Gulf of Mexico on Friday morning as the first major hurricane in the Gulf in November for almost 40 years, bringing the threat of life-threatening conditions to the southern United States coastline.
Forecasters said the storm could cause dangerous surf and riptides across the whole Gulf region in the coming days, after causing havoc in Cuba where millions are still without power.
As of 4 a.m. ET, Rafael was 585 miles east of the mouth of the Rio Grande with sustained wind speeds of 120 mph, making it a Category 3 hurricane, moving west at a rate of 9 mph, the National Hurricane Center said.
Rafael is now tied with Hurricane Kate in 1985 as the strongest storms recorded in the Gulf.
The storm is expected to weaken throughout the weekend, but it could still produce tropical storm-force winds — which is between 39 and 73 mph — up to 115 miles from its center.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel on Thursday visited areas hit by the storm and spoke to a team working to fix six electricity towers that were knocked down by winds of 115 mph earlier this week.
The country's entire power network collapsed, the state-run operator UNE said, plunging the nation's 10 million people into darkness — the second full blackout on the island in the last month — with many areas still unconnected. More than 283,000 people were evacuated, 98,300 from the capital, authorities said.
The capital, Havana, with 2 million people living in densely packed and largely old buildings, is particularly vulnerable to natural disasters. Desperate locals made their way to hotels with their own generators in search of scarce power.
"It is the second time that we have to live through all that has happened: the weather and the problems with the energy grid of the country," local resident Mario de la Rosa Negrin told The Associated Press. "The hotel offered, in solidarity, the power from their power plants to the neighbors so that people could charge their mobile phones and their lamps."
Rafael is the 17th named storm of the hurricane season. It is only the sixth hurricane to be recorded in the Gulf of Mexico in November and the third to be rated Category 2 or higher. The others were Ida in 2009, a Category 2 storm, and Kate in 1985, which was Category 3.
