Alex strengthens into a rare winter Atlantic hurricane

The surprise was evident in what the Hurricane Center meteorologist wrote in this morning’s tropical discussion on the storm – “Remarkably, Alex has undergone the transformation into a hurricane”.

Alex is forecast to move north through the eastern Atlantic Ocean the next few days while transitioning back to a non-tropical low pressure system late Friday.

An out of season subtropical storm has formed over the far eastern Atlantic, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Alex follows the oddball formation of Hurricane Pali in the Pacific, another rare January storm which came unusually close to the equator earlier this week. Another storm, Alice, formed at the end of December, 1954, and dissipated a week later in 1955. Alex, however, is the first storm on record to achieve hurricane status in the month of January since 1938. The storm could lead to up to seven inches of rain in isolated areas of the Azores and three to five inches throughout.

Alex’s maximum sustained winds on Thursday morning were near 85 miles per hour (140 kph).

A new calendar year means starting over in the alphabet on named tropical storms.

Storms that are tropical get their energy from warm water. When it hits, accompanying rain could potentially spur life-threatening flash floods and mudslides, while a storm surge is expected to bring significant coastal flooding.

A satellite image of Hurricane Alex in the Atlantic.

In this case, the anomaly has been that temperatures in the upper part of the troposphere – around 6 miles up – have been much colder than normal at -60C.

FORECAST FOR ALEX: Steering winds will likely guide Alex and its gusty showers through the Azores region through Thursday and Friday. They are also puzzled as to how the storm managed to garner enough strength to metamorphize into Hurricane Alex.