As some of you shiver, or dig out from snow, would you believe a recent end of December still hadn't wrapped a bow on hurricane season?
On Dec. 30, 2005, 20 years ago today, the National Hurricane Center wrote its first advisory on Tropical Storm Zeta in the far eastern Atlantic.
Zeta formed along an old front, eventually sprouting enough thunderstorms near it to warm its core and become a tropical storm less than 48 hours before the new year arrived.
This tenacious tropical storm fought off wind shear to twice reach its peak intensity of 65 mph winds — only 9 mph shy of hurricane status — before finally fizzling to a remnant low on Jan. 6, 2006.
Zeta capped arecord 2005 Atlantic hurricane seasonwith 28 storms, 15 hurricanes and seven hurricanes reaching Category 3 or stronger status. It was the first hurricane season requiring an alternate list of names — Greek letters at the time — after the 21 names were used up.
Zeta was one of only two known Atlantic tropical cyclones to have been active over the New Year's holiday.Hurricane Alicewas the only other, having rung in the new year 70 years ago before raking through the northern Leeward Islands in early January 1955.
Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him onBluesky,X (formerly Twitter)andFacebook.
