According to Jeff Masters at Wunderblog, “The earliest named storm on record in the Central Pacific, Hurricane Pali, formed on January 7.”

The storm is out in the middle of the ocean, west of Kiribati:

The reason this storm formed off season is a combination of high sea surface temperatures because of global warming and, on top of this, extra high sea surface temperatures because of El Nino. In a sense, this year is preview of what things will be like all the time, more or less, as an “average” globally-warmed year catches up to an El Niño year.