Hurricane season is in full swing, and Tropical Storm Chantal is evidence of this. Late last night, the storm formed over 445 miles from Cape Race in the Atlantic Ocean.
Thankfully, the storm isn’t expected to be a threat to any land areas, as it will be moving eastward over the ocean and is likely to run out of steam before ever making landfall.
Originally, the National Hurricane Center noticed a formation of disturbed weather over the ocean during the weekend near the Southeastern coast of the US. Due to the weather pattern’s distance from land, it seemed unlikely it would organize into a proper storm.
However, after traveling further east and out to sea, the disturbance became better organized. Late Tuesday evening, the NHC remarked that the weather pattern had tropical storm-level wind speeds and a defined center.
The storm was named Chantal by the NHC overnight on Tuesday as warm, moist air from the ocean rose into the atmosphere and formed powerful storm clouds. Due to the very high latitude that the storm formed at, it’s unlikely to threaten any landfall.
This is due to the prevailing winds in the basin it formed in driving it eastward and further out to sea, towards Greenland and Europe. It’s unlikely that the storm will pose any serious threat to anyone other than sailors and pilots passing through the region.
Notably, it’s been over a month since a hurricane formed in the Atlantic. The last named storm in the region was Barry on July 13th, which made landfall and caused some damage to shoreline areas in Louisiana. Chantal is the northernmost storm to form in the Atlantic since Alberto in 1988.
This unusual combination of factors makes Chantal a storm worth studying, as the relatively calm seas and far-north formation could provide more insight into how we can predict storm formation.
