() — Danielle is the first hurricane of the Atlantic season, as designated this Friday by the National Hurricane Center.
It has sustained winds of 120 km/h, the agency said.
It stays away from the coast and won’t be a threat to any landmass for at least five days.
The hurricane center says that Danielle will be a Category 2 hurricane and will remain almost stationary through the weekend.
“The storm is forecast to meander over the open Atlantic for the next two days,” the hurricane center said Friday morning. “Maximum sustained winds have increased to near 110 km/h (70 m/h) with higher gusts. Additional strengthening is expected over the next couple of days, and Danielle is forecast to become a hurricane later this morning”.
The hurricane center announced Thursday that Danielle had become a named storm in the North Atlantic on Wednesday, the first named storm since July 3. This means that last month was the first August in 25 years in which there was not a single named storm in the Atlantic.
The last time the first hurricane of the season arrived this late was on September 11, 2013, with Hurricane Humberto.
The average date for the first hurricane of the season is August 11.
This was only the third August since 1950 that the Atlantic did not see a named storm. And it’s the first time since 1941 that there wasn’t a named storm in the Atlantic from July 3 to August 30, said Phil Klotzbach, a research scientist at Colorado State University.
“This remarkably quiet period of Atlantic tropical cyclones is likely to end soon,” Klotzbach said Wednesday.
‘s Allison Chinchar and Judson Jones contributed to this report.
Add Comment