A disturbance is in the Atlantic, and after hurricane season, too. What the forecast says

UPDATE 12/6/2022: The disturbance has a medium chance of turning into Tropical or Subtropical Storm Owen this week, forecasters say.

Read the original article below:

A disturbance appeared in the Atlantic Monday, just days after hurricane season came to an end.

The disturbance, described as a large area of low pressure, is over the central subtropical Atlantic and about 800 miles northeast of the northern Leeward Islands, according to the National Hurricane Center’s Monday night advisory.

The system has a 40% chance of formation through the next 48 hours and a medium 50% chance of formation through the next five days.

The forecast is calling for the system to acquire some subtropical or tropical characteristics as it drifts northeast over the Atlantic’s open waters during the next few days.

“By Friday, the low is expected to move over cooler waters and interact with a mid-latitude trough, limiting potential of tropical transition after that time,” the hurricane center said. This means it shouldn’t be a threat to Florida or the rest of the United States.

If it were to turn into a tropical storm, it would be named Owen.

Can a storm form after hurricane season?

Hurricane season officially starts on June 1 and officially ends on Nov. 30. It’s a man-made time frame used to represent the months when tropical storms and hurricanes are most likely to develop.

However, storms can form year-round. And while December storms are rare, they have formed before.

Since 2000, only nine storms have formed after Nov. 30 and none of them made a U.S. landfall, Alex DesRosiers, a Ph.D. candidate at Colorado State University who is part of the school’s Tropical Weather & Climate Research group, previously told the Miami Herald.

Miami Herald staff writer Omar Rodriguez Ortiz contributed to this report.

This story was originally published December 5, 2022 at 11:48 AM.

Michelle Marchante

Miami Herald

305-376-2708

Michelle Marchante covers the pulse of healthcare in South Florida and also the City of Coral Gables. Before that, she covered the COVID-19 pandemic, hurricanes, crime, education, entertainment and other topics in South Florida for the Herald as a breaking news reporter. She recently won first place in the health reporting category in the 2025 Sunshine State Awards for her coverage of Steward Health’s bankruptcy. An investigative series about the abrupt closure of a Miami heart transplant program led Michelle and her colleagues to be recognized as finalists in two 2024 Florida Sunshine State Award categories. She also won second place in the 73rd annual Green Eyeshade Awards for her consumer-focused healthcare stories and was part of the team of reporters who won a 2022 Pulitzer Prize for the Miami Herald’s breaking news coverage of the Surfside building collapse. Michelle graduated with honors from Florida International University and was a 2025 National Press Foundation Covering Workplace Mental Health fellow and a 2020-2021 Poynter-Koch Media & Journalism fellow.  Support my work with a digital subscription