The most powerful hurricane that has hit the vicinity of Caribbean nearly after a decade has severely traumatized the residents of Haiti.
Labelled as Hurricane Matthew, it is the 13th named storm of the 2016 Atlantic Hurricane season, which is said to be even more disastrous and petrifying than the last Hurricane Felix back in 2007. So what made hurricane Matthew so strong yet daunting? Well firstly, Hurricane Matthew made its way to the Category 4 hurricane status completely and was on the brink of touching Category 5. NASA reported that hurricane Mathew had winds surpassing 157 mph (252km/h) on the 1st of October.
Soon afterwards, there was a gradual decrease in the strength of Hurricane Matthew and eventually dropped to Category 4. Even then, the nonstop winds were measured to be at 140 mph (225km/h) on October 3. Matthew not only possessed unbearable tree-uprooting high speed winds, but according to the National Hurricane Centre in Florida, the storm brought along the anticipation of life threatening rain and storm outpouring.
Based on the analytical study by NHC, the Category 4 hurricane is usually described as rendering "catastrophic damage", which can create damage on a large scale, ravaging well-constructed homes, causing stretched power outages, uprooting trees and delivering irreparable loss of human lives and property damage.
Hurricane Matthew was titled as the perfect storm by Chris Lancey, a science and operations officer at the NHC. It is maintained that such hurricanes in the mentioned vicinity are infrequent and have to meet certain weather conditions and temperature intensity to produce such a beast.
Lancey continued that there are certain ingredients in the recipe to give birth to a powerful hurricane. Initially, the first requirement is warm water. The warmer it is, the hurricane will be intensified.
And it can't just be a shallow layer at the ocean surface, he added.
Another factor Lancey added is the moist air. Moist air is originated over the tropical region, but dry air from Europe and African mainland usually negates the effects, thus, making the hurricane weak.
"If dry air is sucked into a hurricane, it disrupts the thunderstorm activity and causes them to stutter," he said.
The final ingredient he mentioned is the wind shear, which is called the rapid fluctuations in the speed of the wind or direction at certain atmospheric heights.
Lancey maintained that in order to witness a hurricane of Category 4 or Category 5, all of the requirements should principally meet. And in case of Mathew, it is expected that the damage will be caused by the overwhelming amount of rain outpour with predictions calculating it to be 15-25 inches in the coming days.
Currently, Matthew is making its way and approaching the southwestern Haiti. The storm is anticipated to hit eastern Cuba and southeastern parts of the Bahamas on October 5.
