Hurricane Epsilon weakens back into tropical storm

MIAMI (Reuters) – Hurricane Epsilon, the 14th hurricane of
a record-breaking Atlantic storm season, weakened back into a
tropical storm on Sunday as it drifted eastward over open
waters, U.S. forecasters said.

The storm posed no threat to land and its maximum sustained
winds had dropped to 70 mph (110 kph), just below the threshold
for it to be categorized as a hurricane, the U.S. National
Hurricane Center said.

Epsilon was around 790 miles west-southwest of Portugal’s
Azores islands by 4 a.m. EST (0900 GMT) and moving east at 13
mph (20 kph). The cyclone was expected to loop back to the
southwest after a couple of days and dissipate.

The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season officially ended on
Wednesday but it is not altogether unusual for tropical storms
to form in December. In other ways, however, the 2005 season
has been extremely unusual.

Epsilon, the sixth hurricane to occur in December since
records began in 1851, was named like its four predecessors for
a letter in the Greek alphabet after the official list of storm
names for 2005 was exhausted.

This season saw the most tropical storms on record — 26 —
and the most hurricanes, with 14. The highest number of
hurricanes previously on record was 12, in 1969, and the
highest number of named storms was 21, in 1933.

The long-term average is 10 storms per season, six of which
become hurricanes.

This year also set a record of three Category 5 storms —
the most powerful on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of
hurricane intensity — including Hurricane Katrina, which
devastated New Orleans and killed more than 1,200 in Louisiana
and Mississippi.

Hurricane Wilma in October became the strongest hurricane
ever observed in the Atlantic, and Vince in October the first
tropical storm known to have come ashore in southern Spain.

While most climatologists agree that the large number of
storms can be blamed on a natural and periodic switch in
climatic conditions, some experts say there are signs global
warming could be increasing the intensity of storms.