Tropical Storm Danielle becomes first named storm in two months

Story at a glance


  • Tropical Storm Danielle formed at 11:00 a.m. on Thursday 960 miles west of the Azores.


  • Danielle is the first named tropical storm in the past two months.


  • While forecasters predicted an active hurricane season, there have only been a few storms this summer.


After a quiet beginning to the Atlantic hurricane season, a named storm formed on Thursday.

Tropical Storm Danielle formed just before 11 a.m. Eastern time 960 miles west of the Azores, according to the National Hurricane Center.

The storm was moving east with maximum sustained winds of 40 miles per hour, the agency added.


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Forecasters anticipated an abnormally active hurricane season this year, predicting that between 16 to 20 tropical storms would form between June and November.

Out of those storms, forecasters predicted between six and eight would turn into full-fledged hurricanes.

There was not a single hurricane in the Atlantic for the month of August, something that hasn’t happened since 1997 and the third time to ever happen on record, according to AccuWeather hurricane expert Dan Kottlowski.

Since hurricane season started in June, there have been three other named tropical storms. The first, Alex, which formed on June 5, caused flooding in western Cuba and South Florida.

The second storm of the season, Bonnie, formed in early July, and took a strange route from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The storm turned into a category 1 hurricane and resulted in the deaths of at least five people after tearing through Central America.

Tropical Storm Colin, formed right after Bonnie, about 50 miles southwest of South Carolina’s Myrtle Beach. The storm drenched the Carolinas in heavy rainfall and became the first tropical storm to make landfall in the U.S. this season.

There was a close call during the second week of August, when a tropical rainstorm formed over the western Gulf of Mexico, but the system eventually passed over South Texas before it could grow into anything worse, according to AccuWeather.

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