Hurricanes have arrived early this year in the northern hemisphere. Just days after hurricane Pali became the earliest Central Pacific hurricane on record, the Atlantic basin spun up its own unusual storm. On January 14, 2016, a tropical depression in the eastern Atlantic evolved into hurricane Alex; it became the earliest hurricane in the basin since 1938 and just the fourth January hurricane in 150 years of records.At 11:00 a.m. Azores time (13:00 Universal Time) on January 14, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this view of hurricane Alex. Two hours after the image was acquired, the storm was reported to have sustained winds of 75 knots (85 miles or 140 kilometers per hour) and a central pressure of 981 millibars.
Ned Hamson's Second Line View of the News 