Post-season Tropical Storm Zeta forms in Atlantic

By Jane Sutton

MIAMI (Reuters) – Tropical Storm Zeta formed in the eastern
Atlantic Ocean on Friday, a month after the official end of a
record busy hurricane season but forecasters said the straggler
storm did not threaten land.

Zeta was the 27th named storm of the 2005 Atlantic
hurricane season, which officially ended on November 30.

At noon EDT (1700 GMT), Zeta was centered about 1,070 miles

southwest of the Portuguese islands of the Azores and
moving northwest near 8 mph (13 kph). It had top sustained
winds of 50 mph (85 kph) and could strengthen briefly before
fizzling during the weekend, forecasters at the U.S. National
Hurricane Center in Miami said.

Tropical storms thrive when the seas are warm, so December
storms are unusual though not unprecedented in the northern
Atlantic. Six tropical storms have strengthened into hurricanes
in December since record-keeping began in 1851, including
Epsilon earlier this month.

Zeta closed out a record-setting year that forced
forecasters to choose storm names from the Greek alphabet after
exhausting their annual list of 21 names.

“It seems like the final little check mark for this year,”
said Martin Nelson, a lead forecaster at the hurricane center.
“I think it’ll be the last.”

The old record for most tropical storms was 21, set in
1933. Fourteen of this year’s storms strengthened into
hurricanes, breaking the old record of 12 set in 1969.

The year also saw the most expensive hurricane on record
when Hurricane Katrina swamped New Orleans and the U.S. Gulf
coast in August, killing at least 1,300 people and causing more
than $80 billion of damage.