When you purchase through links on our site , we may earn an affiliate committal . Here ’s how it work .

Hurricane Rafael ended its run as a tropical cyclone yesterday ( Oct. 18 ) , when it merged with a frigid front off the glide of Nova Scotia , an event caught byNASA ’s Terra planet .

Rafael became an supernumerary - tropical cyclone the previous day as it move northerly in the Atlantic Ocean . Tropical cyclone ( the generic term forhurricanes , tropical storms and typhoons ) are fuel by warm tropic sea water and moisture - occupy ardent aviation that motor the overturning in the atmosphere that make electric storm ; extra - tropical tempest have shifted to become cold systems that are just like the lowly pressure system that sweep across the mid - latitudes and convey storms with them , a NASA discharge say .

Our amazing planet.

This visible image of Hurricane Rafael in the North Atlantic was taken from the MODIS instrument aboard NASA’s Terra satellite on Oct. 17 at 1440 UTC (10:40 a.m. EDT). Rafael’s northwestern fringe clouds were brushing Nova Scotia, Canada (top left).

At the fourth dimension it made that transmutation , Rafael still had hurricane - force farting that had a maximal speed of 75 miles per hour ( 120 kilometers per hour ) ( the threshold for hurricane strength is 74 mph ) .

The following sidereal day , Rafael meld with the dusty front ; the fringes of the former hurricane were barely brush the coast of Nova Scotia , as can be understand in the Terra satellite image .

Rafael was the 9th hurricane of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season and the 17th named storm ( tempest are named once they reach tropic storm position ) . The tempest spun up during the"second peak " of hurricane season , which historically come in the middle of October . The chief peak of storm season is during August and September .

Hurricane Rafael Merging With Cold Front

This visible image of Hurricane Rafael in the North Atlantic was taken from the MODIS instrument aboard NASA’s Terra satellite on Oct. 17 at 1440 UTC (10:40 a.m. EDT). Rafael’s northwestern fringe clouds were brushing Nova Scotia, Canada (top left).

This hurricane time of year has been an above - mediocre one ; an intermediate season sees 11 call storms , six hurricanes and two major hurricanes .

A satellite image of a large hurricane over the Southeastern United States

a satellite image of a hurricane cloud

A satellite photo of the sun shining on the Pacific Ocean

Two reconstructions showing the location of the north polar vortex over the Arctic on March 1, 2025 and over Northern Europe on March 20, 2025.

Belize lighthouse reef with a boat moored at Blue Hole - aerial view

A satellite photo of an island with a giant river of orange lava

Tropical Storm Theta

Satellite images captured by NOAA�s GOES-16 (GOES-East) showed Hurricane Lorenzo as it rapidly intensified from a Category 2 storm to a Category 4 storm on Sept. 26.

NOAA’s GOES East satellite captured this view of the strong Category 1 storm at 8:20 a.m. EDT, just 15 minutes before the center of Hurricane Dorian moved across the barrier islands of Cape Hatteras.

A hurricane update goes awry when U.S. President Donald Trump refers to a map, from Aug. 29, 2019, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., Sept. 4. See anything funny on the map

Hurricane Dorian, seen in this satellite view on Sept. 3, 2019, along with two other brewing storms.

NASA astronaut Christina Koch shared this view of Hurricane Dorian from the International Space Station on Sept. 2, 2019.

An image comparing the relative sizes of our solar system�s known dwarf planets, including the newly discovered 2017 OF201

an illustration showing a large disk of material around a star

a person holds a GLP-1 injector

A man with light skin and dark hair and beard leans back in a wooden boat, rowing with oars into the sea

an MRI scan of a brain

A photograph of two of Colossal�s genetically engineered wolves as pups.

An illustration of a hand that transforms into a strand of DNA