Hurricane Oscar (2018)

Hurricane Oscar was the first Atlantic major hurricane ever recorded in the month of December. The fifteenth and final named storm of the 2018 Atlantic hurricane season, Oscar formed along the southern end of a very deep cold front in the southwestern Caribbean Sea. Amidst a small pocket of low shear, Oscar rapidly intensified and became a major hurricane. After skirting the coast of Nicaragua where flooding rains from Oscar caused moderate damage. Due to increasing shear from another cold front which wrapped into Oscar's circulation, the system transitioned into a deep extratropical cyclone and underwent bombogenesis over the eastern Gulf of Mexico. As the eastern United States was embedded in a very cold, dry air mass, Oscar dumped heavy, wet snow over much of the eastern United States from central North Carolina to Maine. After transitioning into an extratropical cyclone, Oscar was referred to by many in the media as Superstorm Oscar or Nor'Oscar.