Epsilon Becomes 14th Hurricane of Atlantic Season

MIAMI — Tropical Storm Epsilon strengthened into the 14th hurricane of a record-breaking Atlantic hurricane season on Friday, but was not expected to retain that intensity for long, nor to threaten land, U.S. forecasters said.

Hurricane Epsilon’s maximum sustained winds reached 75 mph (120 kph) by 10 a.m. EST, just 1 mph over the threshold at which tropical storms are categorized as hurricanes, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

The storm was 1,220 miles west of Portugal’s Azores islands and accelerating toward the northeast, away from the wealthy mid-Atlantic British territory of Bermuda, at 14 mph (22 kph).

While the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season officially ended on Wednesday, the Miami-based hurricane center said it was not unprecedented to see a hurricane in December in that part of the Atlantic, where the waters tend to be too cool for storms to intensify greatly.

Epsilon appeared to be traveling along a narrow ridge of warm water and was expected to start weakening steadily within 12 to 18 hours after hitting much cooler waters.

Like its four predecessors, Epsilon was named for a letter in the Greek alphabet after the official list of storm names for 2005 was exhausted.

This season has gone into the record books for the most storms and the most hurricanes. The highest number of hurricanes previously on record was 12 in 1969 and the highest number of named storms was 21 in 1933.

It also had the most Category 5 storms — the top rank on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity — including Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans and killed more than 1,200 people in Louisiana and Mississippi.