By the time Hurricane Alex made landfall in the Azores, it had been downgraded to a tropical storm and thankfully did little damage. But the real significance of the storm was in its timing and location. The Atlantic hurricane season officially lasts from June 1 to November and the January-born hurricane is a weather anomaly not seen since 1955. Major hurricanes with names and potential for significant damage are normally only seen from July onwards.
Alex began as a tropical depression, first spotted on January 14. Within two hours, it was upgraded to a hurricane, with wind speeds of 85 miles per hour. The location too was highly unusual, some 500 miles south of the Azores Islands off the coast of Portugal. Hurricanes normally don't form this far north and east (north of 30 degrees North latitude, east of 30 degrees West longitude) in the Atlantic Ocean. …show more content…
This is however a little above normal water temperatures for the time of the year. When combined with cool air temperatures due to an upper atmosphere low pressure trough, the contrast may have produced the convectional instability allowing the storm to transition to a hurricane.
What makes the anomalous hurricane even more remarkable is that just a few days earlier, a similar phenomenon took place in the North Pacific Ocean, with Hurricane Pali being considered an extremely late season hurricane. Meteorologist Jeff Masters of Weather Underground believes that warmer water temperatures helped in the development of Hurricane Alex: "The unusually warm waters for Alex were due, in part, to the high levels of global warming that brought Earth its warmest year on record in 2015. Global warming made Alex's formation much more likely to
Alex began as a tropical depression, first spotted on January 14. Within two hours, it was upgraded to a hurricane, with wind speeds of 85 miles per hour. The location too was highly unusual, some 500 miles south of the Azores Islands off the coast of Portugal. Hurricanes normally don't form this far north and east (north of 30 degrees North latitude, east of 30 degrees West longitude) in the Atlantic Ocean. …show more content…
This is however a little above normal water temperatures for the time of the year. When combined with cool air temperatures due to an upper atmosphere low pressure trough, the contrast may have produced the convectional instability allowing the storm to transition to a hurricane.
What makes the anomalous hurricane even more remarkable is that just a few days earlier, a similar phenomenon took place in the North Pacific Ocean, with Hurricane Pali being considered an extremely late season hurricane. Meteorologist Jeff Masters of Weather Underground believes that warmer water temperatures helped in the development of Hurricane Alex: "The unusually warm waters for Alex were due, in part, to the high levels of global warming that brought Earth its warmest year on record in 2015. Global warming made Alex's formation much more likely to