After an unusually quiet start to the Atlantic hurricane season, Tropical Storm Danielle formed this Thursday, the first named storm in nearly two months.
A at 14 am Eastern Time, the storm was about 960 miles west of the Azores in the North Atlantic and was moving slowly eastward, according to the National Hurricane Center. The storm had maximum sustained winds of 40 mph but did not present an immediate threat to land.
Danielle is expected to “wander”, forecasters said, before becoming a hurricane in the next few days. It would be the first hurricane of the Atlantic season for 2022.
The meteorologists were also observing two other disturbances in the Atlantic: one that was several hundred miles east of the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean and another near the Cape Verde Islands off the west coast of Africa.
Meteorologists expect the system in the Caribbean strengthen into a tropical depression, which has maximum sustained winds of 38 mph or less, during the next five days. A tropical storm has winds from 39 to 73 mph and hurricanes have winds of at least 74 mph .
The formation of Danielle comes after a relatively quiet start to the Atlantic hurricane season, with only three other named storms. Alex, which formed in early June, caused flooding in South Florida and killed at least three people in Cuba.
There were no named storms in the Atlantic during August, the first time since 1997. After Danielle, the next tropical storms will be named Earl and Fiona.
In early August, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued an updated forecast for the remainder of the Atlantic hurricane season, which called for a higher-than-normal level of activity.
In it, they predicted that the season, which runs until 38 of November, I could see from 14 to 20 named storms, with six to 10 becoming hurricanes that sustain winds of at least 74 mph. Three to five of them could become what NOAA calls major hurricanes, Category 3 or stronger, with winds of at least 111 mph.
Last year, there were 21 named storms, after a record of 30 in 2005. For the past two years, forecasters have exhausted the list of names used to identify storms during the Atlantic hurricane season, something that has only happened once more. , in 2005.
Also read:
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· Why there have been no major hurricanes this August
· Why are more and more tropical cyclones making landfall?