Unusual January tropical storm forms southwest of Hawaii

The area of strong thunderstorms about 1,550 miles southeast of Honolulu has a 60 percent chance of becoming a tropical depression over the next two days, the Central Pacific Hurricane Center said in a special weather outlook statement this afternoon.

A rare development in the Atlantic is being monitored by the National Hurricane Center.

The sea-surface temperature is sufficiently warm and the wind shear is relatively low in the vicinity of the system.

Low pressure was organizing between Bermuda and the Carolinas on Thursday, producing a large area of tropical-storm force winds offshore. “It’s very rare in the Atlantic Ocean to have a named system”, he said.

By Sunday morning, forecasters expect Pali to remain a tropical storm packing 50 miles per hour winds.

“As the system moves northeastward to eastward across the open Atlantic, it may eventually begin to take on some subtropical characteristics”.

The season officially started on May 15 in the East Pacific Ocean and on June 1 in the Central Pacific; they both ended on November 30.

Feltgen said there are three storms since 1851 listed as having formed in January. Just a couple of weeks ago in late December, a tropical depression formed just north of the equator in the central Pacific.

The 2015 Pacific hurricane season is recognized as the second most active Pacific hurricane season on record.