Hurricane Alex forms in Atlantic

According to the NOAA’s historical hurricane tracker database, Alex is the first Atlantic hurricane to form in January since 1938, as well as being just the second on record for the month of January.

This is remarkable because the Atlantic hurricane season runs from 1 June until 30 November, so to get a hurricane forming in January is significant. But Alice is a odd little hurricane because it actually formed in December of 1954 and stayed alive through through January 5, 1955.

However it is the first to form since 1938.

At 4 p.m. ET Thursday, Hurricane Alex packed sustained 85-mph winds as it spun some 350 miles (about 563 kilometers) south of Portugal’s Azores islands, parts of which are under a hurricane warning. It said residents should expect waves up to 18 meters (60 feet) high and wind gusts up to 160 kph (100 mph). Alex is moving toward the north-northeast near 20 miles per hour (31 km/h) and a turn toward the north with an increase in forward speed is expected over the next day or two.

It has been almost four decades since a winter storm in the Atlantic earned a name, and the National Hurricane Center went a step further Thursday, upgrading Alex to a hurricane.

An El Nino-related tropical storm formed southwest of Hawaii last week. As of Thursday morning, Pali had weakened to a tropical depression and was expected to dissipate by Friday.

Alex formed only days after a rare event in the Pacific. It never made landfall and was no threat to land.

The National Hurricane Center has upgraded a storm brewing in the Atlantic Ocean to hurricane status, a rarity both given its timing and strength.