With 29 named storms, the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season is now the most active season since researchers began keeping hurricane records 170 years ago.
The National Hurricane Center named Subtropical Storm Theta late Tuesday morning. The center said the storm is “near hurricane strength” as it heads east from the middle of the Atlantic.
Subtropical Storm #Theta Advisory 3: Theta Near Hurricane Strength as it Continues Heading Eastward Over the Eastern Atlantic. https://t.co/VqHn0u1vgc
— National Hurricane Center (@NHC_Atlantic) November 10, 2020
The NHC said that Theta posed no risk to land given its distance from any coast.
“Little change in strength is forecast during the next couple of days,” the center wrote in its advisory. “Some slow weakening is expected by later this week.”
As the 29th storm of the 2020 season, Theta beat the previous record of 28 named storms in one season, from 2005. Comparatively, there were 18 named storms during the 2019 season. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the least active hurricane season was 1914, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s archives. There was one storm that year.
There have now been 30 total storms in 2020, named or unnamed, and Eta was the 12th to become a hurricane. In 2005, there were 31 total storms, named and unnamed. Eta was also the fourth storm to be considered a major storm. Earlier this year, Hurricane Delta broke the 1916 record for the most named storms to hit the United States.
While Theta will likely not make it to any coast, tropical storm Eta is churning in the Gulf of Mexico and is projected to make landfall on the Florida panhandle as a tropical depression Sunday morning, according to NBC. The outlet added that “there is very low confidence in the track and intensity of Eta as it approaches the Gulf Coast later this week. Eta could approach the Florida Gulf Coast by late Friday or early Saturday as a tropical storm or tropical depression, and possibly bring rain, wind and storm surge.”
Approaching another record, should Eta retain tropical storm-force winds until Saturday, it will become the longest-lived hurricane in November to date.
