As you know, if Tropical Storm Humberto, which is out in the eastern Atlantic at the moment, turns into a hurricane AFTER noon tomorrow, September 11th, it will break the record for latest first hurricane in the Atlantic hurricane season for the period of good records. Everyone was expecting Humberto to ramp up hurricane intensity today, but strengthening of the storm has stalled a bit, and Humberto is not as organized as expected.
Officially, the National Weather Service predicts that Humberto will be a hurricane later today. But it is possible that this won’t happen. We will be watching closely.
Meanwhile, Gabrielle, which was a tropical storm that got downgraded to blobby thing, is back as a tropical storm and is menacing Bermuda. Gabrielle is showing unexpected intensity and is larger than expected, and is and will be a very powerful tropical storm, but is expected to stay at sea.
By the way, Humberto is moving northwest but is expected to turn west before falling apart and returning to tropical storm status. Then, it will be a blobby thing that is no longer a named tropical storm out in the middle of the Atlantic. I’m not sure what forecasters thing, but I suppose it is possible that exHumberto could return as Humberto 2.0, like Gabrielle did. This seems to have happened a few times this season. I wonder if we are going to see a new record: Number of times a storm gets unnamed then returns.
UPDATE: Humberto is a Hurricane, and apparently became one over night. Humberto was upgraded in this morning’s 5:00 AM update. In order for Humberto to have broken the record of being the latest first hurricane in the Atlantic over the period of records, this upgrading had to happen after noon time today. So, no record was broken this year, but just barely!