by Carrie
Mon Oct 10th, 2005 at 03:48:03 PM EST
According to this Spanish report, Hurricane Vince (now downgraded to Tropical Storm again) will hit Spain tomorrow. According to the Wikipedia, this is the first time that "V" is used since the current Naming scheme was adopted in 1953. For the life of me, I can't remember a tropical storm ever hitting Spain, but then again I didn't use to pay attention to such things before this year. Apparently, Hurricane Jeanne (1998) followed a very similar path to Vince, but was much weaker by the time it hit Portugal.
A tropical storm in the North-Eastern Atlantic is in many ways analogous to one in the SouthWestern Atlantic, where Hurricanes are also uncommon. I recently read that climatologists are still puzzled about Hurricane Catarina, which hit Brazil last year and is a unique event, and so much more indicative of changing weather regimes than an intensification of the North Atlantic hurricane season.
Steve Gregory calls Vince "an oddity" and "picture perfect". Jeff Masters sounds even more shocked:
Vince is definitely an oddball storm. First of all, it's ridiculous that we're up to a "V" storm in early October. Second of all, Vince formed in a very unusual location--off the coast of Portugal. No known tropical storm has ever formed so far north and east. Thirdly, Vince formed in a region where water temperatures were only about 24 C--usually, 26 C is needed! Fourthly, Vince is incredibly tiny--and was a hurricane for about 12 hours!
Update [2005-10-11 20:47:21 by Migeru]:Hurricane Vince became the first tropical storm on record to hit Spain when it made landfall near Huelva.
