(WTXL) — It's official, our first named named storm of the 2019 Hurricane Season, Andrea, has formed in the Atlantic.
This comes just two weeks before the official start of the season.
This is actually the fifth year in a row the first Atlantic storm developed before the official start of hurricane season.
It runs from June through November but tropical systems don't necessarily play along with those dates.
According to NOAA's database, Andrea is the 36th Atlantic storm to form before June 1 so seeing these systems jump the gun isn't rare.
Andrea formed several hundred miles southwest of Bermuda as a subtropical storm.
The track keeps this tropical system away from the U.S. entirely and the national hurricane center forecasts it to continue weakening the next few days.
Despite how it may seem, there's no correlation between tropical activity prior to June 1st and a busy remainder of the hurricane season.
Remember tropical storm Alberto? Last year's example of an early start to the season. The storm made a Memorial Day landfall along the Florida Panhandle.
And Andrea is a good reminder of why we start getting prepared as early as possible.
And the WTXL team is here to help you do just that. We'll show you everything you need to know about getting ready for whatever this season brings, during our Hurricane Special airing on June 1.
