Hurricane season officially ends in 12 days, but there’s a 50-50 chance that we will have one more named storm to acknowledge before we can call it a wrap.
That’s because an area of low pressure east of the Leeward Islands was producing winds of 30 mph as of Monday afternoon and expected to gradually strengthen as it moves north into the open Atlantic, according to the National Hurricane Center.
It’s not unprecedented for a storm to develop this late in the season. Three years ago, Hurricane Oscar didn’t become a hurricane until Nov. 24, and strengthened into a Category 3 storm that made landfall near the Costa Rica-Nicaragua border with winds of 115 mph.
We should have no such concerns this year, forecasters said.
While the area of low pressure could become a subtropical system, or even Tropical Storm Sebastien, it is forecast to merge with a frontal system and weaken by midweek. Still, forecasters give it a 50 percent chance of development in the next 48 hours.
And regardless of development, forecasters say it will drift to the north and away from the U.S.
It's just a subtle reminder that it's hurricane season until the calendar says December.
Editor's Note: The storm, if it were to form, would be named Sebastien. An earlier headline and version of the story listed a different name.
