Hurricane Alex weakens, but proof Mother Nature never misses opportunity to impress

January 15, 2016 | Filed in: Hurricane Alex, unreal weather, winter storms.

Hurricane Alex, only the second January-born Atlantic hurricane on record, is proof Mother Nature never misses an opportunity to impress.

The incredibly rare storm that gained hurricane status Thursday hundreds of miles south of the Azores, left the coast of Florida last week on a southeasterly path that kept it over warmer ocean waters and allowed a brew of thunderstorms to become something more.

National Hurricane Center forecasters called its evolution “remarkable,” noting that since 1851, just one previous hurricane has formed in January _ an unnamed and short-lived 1938 storm.

As of the most recent advisory Friday morning, Alex had 75 mph winds and was about 50 miles southeast of Terceira Island in the Central Azores.

Predictions Wednesday were for the odd little cyclone to maintain status quo with 50 mph sustained winds. Instead, it ramped up to 85 mph, forcing a hurricane warning to be issued Thursday for the Azores. “When Alex upgraded to subtropical Wednesday, it was over 72-degree water,” said Dan Kottlowski, a senior meteorologist and hurricane expert with the Pennsylvania- based AccuWeather. “Now it’s over 68-degree water, which, theoretically, means we shouldn’t have a storm like this out there.”

Alex poses no threat to the U.S., except to challenge the parameters of the human- designated hurricane season, a tidy June through November timeline that storms are expected to follow.

But Kottlowski cautioned not to consider Alex’s early formation as a sign that the 2016 storm season will be busy.

“This is in a class by itself,” he said. “This is not an omen.”

Hurricane center forecasters noted that Alex is over waters typically too cold for heat- hungry storms, but still slightly warmer than normal. At the same time, the upper atmosphere in unusually cold. The difference in temperatures between the moist lower atmosphere and colder dry upper atmosphere is creating a conflict energetic enough to feed the storm.

“The resulting instability is likely the main factor contributing to the tropical transition and intensification of Alex,” hurricane center forecasters wrote in their 10 a.m. update. “Only slight additional intensification seems possible since the system will be passing over even colder waters during the next day or two.”

On Tuesday, Alex was producing winds near 60 mph – speeds that if considered alone could have qualified it as a subtropical or tropical storm. But the system was still being powered by differences in lofty atmospheric temperatures, not sucking up energy from the ocean or clustering its thunderstorms toward the center – clearer signs of a subtropical or tropical formation. By Thursday Alex had carved out a clear eye surrounded by thunderstorms, and had separated from the upper level weather system fostering it.

“Alex’s unusual life as a January hurricane will be a short one,” said Jeff Masters, a meteorologist and co-founder of the forecasting service Weather Underground in a blog. “The system is already accelerating northward ahead of a strong upper-level trough, and by late Friday it should be a powerful post-tropical low racing toward Greenland.”

Masters notes that the storm’s warm, moist air may boost temperatures over Greenland more than 35 degrees above average during the weekend.

While Alex is only the second hurricane to form in January, there are a handful of named storms that have twirled in the Atlantic during the first month of the year.

Hurricane Alice formed Dec. 31, 1954, but managed to live through the New Year before dissipating Jan. 4. Tropical Storm Zeta formed in Dec. 30, 2005 and also lived until Jan. 6. A tropical storm was recorded in January 1951, and there was a subtropical storm in January 1978.

Kottlowski said there may have been other January storms that weren’t identified prior to the 1970s when satellite technology was not as advanced.

Also, because meteorologists rely on climatological records when making forecasts, storms like Alex can be hard to predict.

“This is a very rare situation,” Kottlowski said. “Usually when you are forecasting weather you can say, ‘OK, I’ve seen this before,’ but we haven’t seen this before.”