Hurricane Alex, with maximum sustained winds of 85 miles per hour, is projected to head almost straight north, a track that would pose no threat to the United States. At 11 a.m. Thursday, the storm was about 1,100 miles off the coast of Morocco, a position that put it closer to Africa than North America, according to the National Hurricane Center.
A hurricane warning was issued for the central Azores, a cluster of islands about 900 miles west of Portugal.
Alex formed six weeks after the end of the official hurricane season, a period from June 1 to Nov. 30 that sees the vast majority of hurricanes.
The last time a hurricane formed in January was in 1938, when a tropical storm in the middle of the Atlantic briefly achieved hurricane strength. Hurricane Alice, a 1955 storm, existed in January but had formed in December, according to the National Hurricane Center.
“Remarkably, Alex has undergone the transformation into a hurricane,” National Hurricane Center forecaster Richard Pasch wrote in the advisory issued Thursday morning.
Meteorologists expect Alex to produce 3 to 5 inches of rain over the Azores through Friday.
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