It took a while, but the first Atlantic hurricane of the year has arrived.
A relatively
compact Danny strengthened into a Category 1 hurricane on Thursday morning,
still more than 1,000 miles east of the eastern Caribbean islands.
Plenty could
change in the next few days, but it looked Thursday as if the storm could reach
the Leeward Islands such as Guadeloupe and St. Kitts and Nevis as a Category 1
hurricane by Monday, CNN meteorologist Dave Hennen said.
Danny was small
for a hurricane, the National Hurricane Center said, with hurricane-force winds
extending only 10 miles from center. Its maximum sustained winds were 75 mph,
just above the hurricane threshold.
The hurricane center cautioned that Danny's small size make
forecasting its strength especially difficult.
"Danny's
compact size makes it subject to significant fluctuations in strength, both up
and down, and such fluctuations are notoriously difficult to forecast,"
the center said in a forecast discussion posted online.
El Niño's effect on
hurricanes
Danny two days earlier became the first
named storm of the Atlantic season -- unusually, if not unexpectedly, late.
Forecasters had
already said that this year's season would produce a below-normal number of hurricanes,
in part because of this year's strong
El Niño, which is causing strong wind shears in the Atlantic, hindering cyclone
development.
Hurricane
Arthur, a Category 2 storm, was
the last hurricane to make landfall in the United States, when it came ashore
last July between Cape Lookout and Beaufort in Emerald Island, North Carolina,
the National Hurricane Center said.
This has been
the longest stretch of time to pass without a major hurricane hitting the
United States since reliable record keeping began in 1850, a 2015 NASA study
said.
Though
forecasters are calling for a below-average storm season in the Atlantic, CNN's
Hennen said any hurricane that does emerge this year can have a strong impact.
Hurricane Andrew
struck South Florida and
south-central Louisiana in August 1992 with 175-mph winds, wiping out entire
communities, killing 23 people and causing more than $25 billion in damage.
According to the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Prediction Center, which
has updated its 2015 Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook, there is a 90% chance
of a below-normal hurricane season and a lower chance of expected storm
activity in the United States this year.
This means that
of the 6 to 10 named storms for this season, 1 to 4 storms are likely to become
hurricanes in 2015.
And there's an
even smaller chance that one of these storms will transform into a major
hurricane. The National Hurricane Center calls any Category 3 or higher storm a
major hurricane.
Also, the
Atlantic Ocean has had much cooler temperatures, which decreases the chances of
major storm activity.
Since 1995, the
United States has been in a high hurricane activity area, which typically lasts
around 25 years. But for almost a decade, the country hasn't seen a hurricane
greater than a Category 3 storm, putting it in a nine-year hurricane
"drought."
The United
States still has seen some big storms in the past few years. In 2012, hurricane-turned-cyclone Superstorm
Sandy, ravaged the Northeast with damaging flooding and powerful winds.
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