Qualla: Meteorological History of Hurricane Matthew

Meteorological History of Hurricane Matthew: Introduction

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On the evening of September 29, 2016, a tropical storm northeast of Curacao did something forecasters did not expect. In roughly 36 hours, it went from a disorganized system with 74 mph winds to a Category 5 hurricane with sustained winds of 165 mph - the kind of explosive intensification that catches even the National Hurricane Center off guard. The models had predicted gradual strengthening. The wind shear analysis said the storm should have struggled. But Matthew had found a pocket of calm air within the broader turbulence, invisible to the standard 1,000-kilometer analysis grid. By the time post-storm analysis revealed that shear at the 400-kilometer scale was roughly half what models had calculated, the storm had already written itself into the record books as the southernmost Category 5 Atlantic hurricane ever observed, the first since Hurricane Felix nine years earlier.

Meteorological History of Hurricane Matthew: Born Off Africa's Coast

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Matthew began with a tropical wave rolling off the west coast of Africa near Guinea-Bissau on September 22, riding unusually close to the equator at just 8 to 10 degrees north. Two days later, passing south of Cape Verde, the National Hurricane Center flagged it as likely to deve...

Meteorological History of Hurricane Matthew: The Forecasters' Blind Spot

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

What happened next defied the textbooks. Strong southwesterly wind shear - normally a death sentence for hurricanes - blanketed the region around Matthew. The Statistical Hurricane Intensity Prediction Scheme, using its standard 1,000-kilometer grid, calculated shear values that ...

Meteorological History of Hurricane Matthew: Haiti's Reckoning

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Matthew weakened slightly from its Category 5 peak but remained a ferocious Category 4 storm, its winds oscillating between 145 and 155 mph as it turned northward. On October 3, it reached its minimum central pressure of 934 millibars. The next morning, it made landfall near Les ...

Meteorological History of Hurricane Matthew: Skirting the American Coast

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

After raking Cuba and the Bahamas, Matthew re-strengthened briefly to Category 4 before an eyewall replacement cycle weakened it again. The storm that had threatened to become the first major hurricane to strike the United States since Wilma in 2005 instead tracked just offshore,...

Meteorological History of Hurricane Matthew: The Loop That Never Came

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

As Matthew bore down on the Southeast, one forecast scenario terrified emergency managers: a loop. The GFS model repeatedly showed Matthew curving back south after its Carolina landfall, re-entering the warm Atlantic, and striking the coast a second time - a track reminiscent of ...