At the time of writing this evaluation, I am also taking her Tropical climatology class- Geog 102.
After having two quarters of Professor Raphael, She is a knowledgable climatologist and helpful on answering student questions. I am pretty sure she read most of the reviews on this page because she is no longer a professor which gives out difficult homework questions and she is willing to answer question through email and office hour.
I was one of the students who asked her questions really often in her office hour. I like how she explained the material clearly and even tried to explain in a simple way. I understood a lot in her office hour.
However, I was pretty surprised with her grading on Geog 104. We had 4 assignments, 1 midterm and 1 Final. As always, assignments were calculations. Midterm and final had the same format with definitions, short answer and essay. Be really careful on answering the question because you need a precise sentence on definition and you need to write clearly and organized on the essay. I got a C- on the midterm and I remembered she said the mean of the class is 70, which is a C-. Since I was around the mean, I was feeling okay because I didn't expect a professor would give out so many C to her students. I expected her to curve the class as long as she kept saying "You did a great job if you get 70+ in my class. My class is difficult." I studied really hard for my final and I ended up a B- in class. She said she didn't really curve the final grade. So basically, you HAVE TO study really hard for both midterm and final. Don't feel okay even when she said "you did a good job with 70+" because 90+ is needed to get an A!

I took Geography 104 with Professor Raphael this past winter quarter, and I must say that she seems to have improved quite a bit since her last reviews. I was told by everyone not to take her class because she was an unfair grader and the homework that she assigned was hard blah blah blah...apparently she reads these reviews because none of these things are true anymore. Her first homework assignment was very easy and she even went over each problem step by step in class to make sure that we knew how to do them correctly. She also encouraged anyone that was having difficulty to see her after class or to come to her office hours. I only remember there being 1 or 2 homework assignments that were particularly difficult and that was only because they weren't about specific topics that we had learned in class. Even then, she went over them and gave us a basic idea of how to approach them. The last two assignments were pretty straightforward and were very easy to do. I never went to office hours, and I averaged an A on assignments, although I did make friends in the class and formed a study group. Besides the homework, we had one midterm and one final. The midterm was kind of difficult, depending on how hard you studied...DO NOT LEAVE IT TO THE LAST MINUTE like I did, I ended up getting a C on it. The final in comparison was much easier and more doable considering how much time we had (she gave us an hour and a half), although you do have to work quickly, so know your stuff. I have no gotten my grade back, but I feel like I did fairly well. Overall, make sure you go to lecture, if you happen to miss one, BE SURE TO GET THE NOTES ASAP. Read the book and study, do the homework, and you should be fine. She is nowhere near as bad as everyone says she is, trust me.

In a nutshell: Her homework assignments are challenging to say the least, so see her during office hours for assistance. She gives you the option of which questions you want to answer on the test. Her tests and grading are very fair. At times the book can be a bit over the top and confusing, but if you take descent notes during lecture you should be fine.
Bottom line: Unlike most of the other posts, I think Professor Raphael is a very satisfactory instructor who just happens to teach a challenging subject. Prof.Raphael is a very fair grader.

Professor Raphael's lectures corresponded completely with the text, so if students did not understand something in the text they could wait for lecture, or if lecture was unclear, refer to the text. This reinforcement was very helpful.
The biggest problem I and many others had was the homework. The assignments did not directly relate to the reading/lectures and it was really hard to solve the hw problems because she wouldn't get us started on how to solve them when she handed the hw out. She wouldn't help us apply what she was teaching us in order that we could solve the math. So, we had to spend a lot of time in her office hours if we wanted to learn how to do the hw -- which we needed to know for the tests. Several times she did not know how to completely solve the problems, like she had not taken time to look over the problems she handed out, or she couldn't answer students' questions about the text without "thinking about it and getting back to them next lecture." She often said in lecture that if we did not understand something to please come see her, but she was kind of bristly and and a bit intimidating in her office hours. Overall, if you work very hard, make lots of effort to understand the reading and lectures, go to her office hours to understand the homework (you have to go!!!), and study like mad for exams, you can get an A, and you will learn some very interesting things about climatology in the process. This class is a big time commitment.