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Subscribe to RSSTropical Storm Leslie gained steam over the Atlantic Ocean and was upgraded to a Category 1 hurricane — the sixth Atlantic hurricane of the season — the National Hurricane Center said Wednesday. NBC's Brian Williams reports.
Tropical Storm Leslie gained steam over the Atlantic Ocean and was upgraded to a Category 1 hurricane — the sixth Atlantic hurricane of the season — the National Hurricane Center said Wednesday.
“Maximum sustained winds are now 75 mph” with even higher gusts, the NHC said in an alert.
Leslie was about 465 miles southeast of Bermuda on Wednesday morning and was moving north at about 2 mph. "(Its) closest pass to Bermuda would be overnight Saturday night into early Sunday," said Jonathan Erdman, a meteorologist for The Weather Channel.
Current storm projections show Leslie tracking off the Eastern Seaboard to south of Nova Scotia, Canada, but not making landfall. "Leslie will continue to be a generator of waves along the East Coast, with a rip current threat persisting through Saturday from Florida to New England," Erdman said.
Leslie is expected to grow into a Category 2 hurricane by Saturday.
Related: Click here to see our storm tracker
Tropical Storm Michael, meanwhile, continues to churn farther east in the Atlantic. Storm projections show Michael growing into a Category 1 hurricane, perhaps by Wednesday evening, but it is not a threat to land. Michael is "well removed from any land interests," Erdman said, and is "not a wave generator for the East Coast."
The effects of Isaac, the storm that made landfall in Louisiana late last week as a hurricane, are still affecting parts of the United States.
U.S. regulators said about 50 percent of daily oil production and more than a quarter of daily natural gas output in the Gulf remains shut, Reuters reported.
Meanwhile, tar has washed ashore on some Louisiana beaches from Gulf waters churned by Isaac, according to The Associated Press.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Darn. Looks like the US will keep extending the record. Longest length of time since a major hurricane (Cat 3 or higher) has hit the US. Almost 7 years since a hurricane has hit Florida. July set a new record for the fewest tornadoes. Each of the last 5 decades (60s thru today) had fewer major hurricanes hit the US than the 5 decades before that.
World wide tropical cyclone numbers have trended downward during the past 30 years of warming. It's not the 30 year warming half of the natural 60 years cycle we have to worry about. It's the 30 years of cooling that brings the worst of the storms.
As the ocean currents are returning to pattern they were in in the 1950s (cooling) more eastern seaboard hurricanes have already been forecast.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_hurricane_season
Well the bar graph at the bottom of that webpage disagrees with you. Admittedly it is only the Atlantic but it is still obvious that there have been more storms in the last 30 years on average than in the previous 30. Even more obvious from the mid 90's forward.
All you schmucks who stated that there would be no storms in the Atlantic this season: we're up to 12 now.
Apologies to NOAA at any time you're ready to man up.
If NOAA is so smart, how come they didn't predict the storms that blew the lights out for the better part of a week in Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia? We have yet to see the massive storms that were predicted to occur because of Global Warming. Even Isaac wasn't that massive. Most of the damage was caused because it moved so slow.
To not worry Jonathan, they will be coming. It takes a long time for that level of feedback to generate though. If we continue our pollution at current rates we will probably start to see those predicted super storms around 2035-2055 with our normal systems becoming stronger, more erratic, and more devastating in the mean time.
Critical times hard to deal with, will be here.
Romney wants less firefighters, police, haz mat teams and all those other government workers he hates to pay for. Yet he wants policies that will cause more hurricanes and other extreme weather with his quest to drill baby drill and burn baby burn all the hydrocarbon fuels mother nature only provides once in eternity (they all will be gone in a couple hundred years or less wanna bet, and we need oil for chemicals, solvents, lubricants, pharmaceuticals, synthetic rubbers, etc., I don't think recycling old plastics and tires will provide all these).
Obama should promise he will push to get every single veteran that needs a job working in a new National Emergency Response Corps that FEMA could run using mainly veterans. We could have an earthquake or two wiping out many cities along with floods and hurricanes and tornados all at the same time people!!! The minimum we could do to tackle both problems much better is employ the vets and other healthy young Americans to be ready to respond to emergencies and aftermath recoveries. When they are not busy responding to emergencies, they can work on other projects like national park maintenance and building, like the FDR 1930's Civilian Work Corps that saved millions from starving and death being homeless in the Great Depression. Need places to stage the equipment and supplies and even house some folks working in these - look at the dozens of closed Air Force, Army, Navy and Marine bases/forts all over the country, many of their buildings are still valuable and useful but collecting dust in areas with hurt economies from the base/fort closures.