Just over one month from starting the 2006 hurricane season, the National Hurricane Center has determined that there was an undetected tropical cyclone last year. The storm, which will remain unnamed, occurred on October 4th and 5th, 2005, and raised the total number of storms for the season to 28.

After further review, as they say in the NFL, an upper level low developed over the Canary Islands in late September, and moved towards the Azores, where it became a subtropical storm. The storm later merged into what became Hurricane Vince. Hurricane Vince, as you may remember, was a bit of an oddball that moved northeast from the mid Atlantic into the coast of Spain — probably not what you or I would consider an American storm.

You can learn more about the unnamed storm here (PDF), and if you want to see the tracks of all the tropical storms and hurricanes in 2005, the Hurricane Center has posted a highly detailed map here.

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Even though the hurricane season officially ended back on November 30th, on Friday, a new tropical storm developed in the Atlantic. The storm, which is not expected to affect land, became the 27th named storm of the 2005 season, and is tied with 1954′s Alice as the latest developing storm of the year in the Atlantic basin.

This means that the storm season lasted from Arlene, which developed on June 8th, through Zeta, which developed on December 30th. Arlene, along with Bret marked one of the few times that two named storms developed in June.

Barring another storm developing in the last few hours of 2005, the next storm will be Alberto, the first name selected for the 2006 season. The other names you can expect to see next year are Beryl, Chris, Debby, Ernesto, Florence, Gordon, Helene, Isaac, Joyce, Kirk, Leslie, Michael, Nadine, Oscar, Patty, Rafael, Sandy, Tony, Valerie, and William.

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November 30th marks the official end of the 2005 Hurricane season, which was by all accounts, a record setter. In case you didn’t notice (and I don’t blame you), the 26th named storm of the season, Epsilon, formed today, and is now active in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

The extremely active season outran everybody’s predictions. NOAA had predicted 18-21 named storms for 205; we had 26. They predicted 9 to 11 hurricanes; we ended up with 13. Closer to the mark was the prediction for 5-7 major hurricanes; we had 7.

Records set this year include 26 named storms, beating the previous record of 21 in 1933. We also had three category 5 hurricanes (Katrina, Rita, and Wilma), topping the previous record of 2 in 1960 and 1961.

The record setting weather we saw in this year’s hurricane season may continue in 2006. Although it’s almost 6 months until the season starts again, in Washington, NOAA administrator Navy Vice Admiral Conrad C. Lautenbacher Jr. told Congress that “I would like to be able to tell you that next year will be calmer, but I can’t.”

Two more tidbits: The weather service said that the large number of storms this season was NOT caused by global warming — instead, they are part of an active tropical cycle going back to 1995. And, if we have yet another storm (do they track storms in December?), it will be Zeta.

If you want to read more, you can see the NOAA press release on the 2005 hurricane season.

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Hurricane Wilma continues to set records of sorts. She’s developed into a Category 5 hurricane, with winds of up to 175 miles an hour. This morning, the barometric pressure in the eye was 882 mb, or 26.05 inches of mercury. As the 21st named storm of the year, she ties a record set back 1933. And, after two major category five storms this year in Katrina and Rita, no one in Florida is taking any chances.

Click the picture of Wilma above to see a larger version, courtesy of NOAA.

While forecasters have been talking about Wilma striking the West coast of Florida sometime overnight Saturday night, her exact path ultimately depends on her interaction with a low pressure system currently over the midwest. The assumption that Wilma will strike Florida, and then move up the East Coast to New England is based on the idea that the low, by then over the Great Lakes, will draw Wilma up, essentially combining the two storms.

However, another possibility exists where the two storms don’t interact at all. If that were to happen, Wilma might not even make the Florida coast, stalling before she gets to the Gulf of Mexico, hitting the Yucatan peninsula, and then rotating towards Cuba.

The National Hurricane Center admits that it is not as confident of the path and timing of Wilma as it had been previously. Meanwhile, here in Georgia, we sit between the two storms, enjoying weather that is 10 degrees above normal. Enjoy it now, because after whatever weather we get this weekend, it’s going to be below normal through the middle of next week.

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The Weather Service has identified a new tropical depression, TD 24, that expected to move into the Gulf of Mexico sometime late this week, and could affect Georgia’s weather next weekend.

The storm is expected to become Tropical Storm Wilma on Monday, and could be a hurricane by midweek:

The storm has 35 MPH winds, and is moving very slowly to the west. Development is presently being hindered by the high pressure system over the southeast that is bringing Georgia such wonderful weather, but conditions should switch by midweek and allow the storm to move towards the western tip of Cuba. From there, the GFS forecast has the storm moving towards the eastern Florida panhandle, then over middle Georgia to the Atlantic Ocean. After that, the storm moved up the east coast in a manner similar to what happened to the remnants of Tropical Storm Tammy, which brought 8 days of rain in a row to the New York and New Jersey areas. Here are some total rainfall amounts from Monday the 10th through Saturday the 15th:

Milford, CT: 14.00
New London, CT: 8.87
Ridgewood, NJ: 7.07
JFK Airport: 11.18
Central Park: 8.84

Wading River, Long Island appears to have had the most rainfall, with 17.82 inches between Tuesday afternoon and Saturday. This is the second wettest October, and the fourth wettest month of all time for Central Park. What New England doesn’t need is a third major rain event this month, but it looks like they might get it.

This morning’s low temperature dropped below 50 for the first time since May 8th. That puts us about right on schedule – the last few years have seen the first below 50 temperatures sometime early in the third week of the month. Things could be cooling down considerably after this week. By next Monday or Tuesday, highs could be in the 60s, with lows possibly down below 40 degrees.

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