Last Updated on March 12, 2023
The National Hurricane Center expects a tropical wave in the Atlantic to become Tropical Storm Isaias on Wednesday. That’s the ninth storm of the season.
2020 will be one for the books…even when it comes to hurricane season. We’ll call the latest tropical storm expected to form Isaias.
If it forms on Wednesday as expected, it will become the earliest “I” storm to form since record keeping began. And it will be the sixth storm this year to break a record with respect to early formation.
I’ll give you the other five, if you’re keeping score:
- Cristobal – Formed on June 2
- Edouard – Formed on July 6
- Fay – Formed on July 9
- Gonzalo – Formed on July 22
- Hanna – Formed on July 24
The name Isaias, incidentally, is the Spanish equivalent of Isaiah. But it’s not pronounced “eye-ZAY-us.” It’s actually pronounced “ee-sah-EE-us.”
Angry viewers have been emailing meteorologists everywhere complaining about the pronunciation. You needn’t bother. The NHC specified the pronunciation and that’s what weather teams are using.
Hurricane season begins on June 1. This year, for the sixth year in a row, the first-named storm formed before that. In fact, we saw the second named storm form before June 1 this year.
The official hurricane forecast called for 20 named storms, 9 hurricanes and of those, 4 major hurricanes. A hurricane becomes a “major hurricane” when it reaches Category 3 strength. I’d appreciate it if we could just have minor hurricanes. I figure we’ve been through enough this year.
Incidentally, if we see 20 named storms, that would tie the record for the second most active season on record.
I hope 2020 doesn’t try to go for the most active on record. (2005 took that honor; that year we ran out of names and started with Greek letters.)
I definitely think there’s no need to try that again!
