[Updated at 11:12 p.m. ET] Tropical Storm Katia was strengthening in the Atlantic Ocean on Tuesday and could become a hurricane on Wednesday, the National Hurricane Center said.
In its 11 p.m. ET advisory, the hurricane center said Katia has maximum sustained winds of 60 mph - up from 45 mph 12 hours earlier. The storm was in the open Atlantic about 1,700 miles east-southeast of the Caribbean Sea's Leeward Islands.
Katia was moving west-northwest near 22 mph. That general motion was expected to continue for the next two days, though the forward speed could decrease, the hurricane center said.
Katia could grow into a Category 3 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 115 mph by Saturday evening, perhaps more than 500 miles east of the Leeward Islands and Puerto Rico, the hurricane center said. It is too early to predict whether the storm will threaten land.
Category 3 hurricanes have maximum sustained winds of 111 to 130 mph.
Katia is the storm name that replaced Katrina in the revolving list of names, according to the center. The list of Atlantic hurricane names is repeated every seven years, and this year the list that was used in 2005 is being reused.
A storm name is retired if it is used for a hurricane that caused major damage, as Katrina did to the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005.
"The only time that there is a change is if a storm is so deadly or costly that the future use of its name on a different storm would be inappropriate for obvious reasons of sensitivity," the hurricane center said.
[Updated at 5:42 p.m. ET] Tropical Storm Katia was strengthening in the Atlantic Ocean on Tuesday and could become a hurricane on Wednesday, the National Hurricane Center said.
In its 5 p.m. ET advisory, the hurricane center said Katia has maximum sustained winds of 60 mph - up from 45 mph six hours earlier. The storm was about 750 miles west of the southernmost of the Cape Verde Islands, which are hundreds of miles off the west coast of Africa.
Katia was moving west-northwest near 20 mph.
[Updated at 11:40 a.m. ET] In its 11 a.m. ET advisory, the hurricane center said Katia has maximum sustained winds of 45 mph. The storm was in the open Atlantic about 630 miles west-southwest of the southernmost of the Cape Verde Islands. It was moving west-northwest at 18 mph. That general motion was expected to continue for the next few days.
[Updated at 5:25 a.m. ET] Tropical Storm Katia barreled across the Atlantic Ocean early Tuesday and is expected to intensify and accelerate, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said.
As of 5 a.m. ET, Katia was about 535 miles (855 kilometers) west-southwest of the southernmost Cape Verde Islands and carried maximum sustained winds of 40 mph (65 kph).
Katia is an awful name for a Hurricane because most of the twits will be calling it "Katie".
Um, not unless they are illiterate.
Since the people in NY think it was a bad idea to leave, how about this storm land right smack with 150 mph winds on times square. Call us later and complain about leaving your little apt or home.
Anonymous, he did say twits.
I hope everyone understands 'Katia' is the replacement name for 'Katrina', which was retired back in 2005.
Kris your guy needs to go back to school
If you thought my sister Irene was bad, just wait!
Stealing my thunder.....and wind and lightning and rain are you?!?!
Aw yeah, the gang's all here!
Hey forrest your so right there But a name is just a form of I d
I can't wait to see what Glenn Back is going to say about Katia
The way Obama spending money and taking everything we got they should name the hurricane " Obummer".....
The way the GOP likes to destroy anything that helps the poorer people, maybe we should name it after them.
how witty and original of you!
They have to be female names moron.
Names of Tropical Storms/Hurricanes alternate between male and female. The next name after Katia is male (Lee), and then back to female Maria.
No, they don't John. They alternate. If there is an "L" storm, it will have a male name, then "M" will be female, and so on. So next time you don't know what you're talking about, it would be smart not to call somebody else a moron.
john macintyre wins moron of the month
hey.... let's look up John Macintyre on facebook and poke the stupid out of him.
Oh, John.. did you forget about:
David (1979)Frederic (1979) Allen (1980) Gilbert (1988)Hugo (1989) Klaus (1990) Bob (1991) Andrew (1992) Luis (1995) Cesar (1996) Georges (1998) Mitch (1998) Floyd (1999). Lenny (1999) Keith (2000) Isidore (2002) Fabian (2003) Juan (2003) Charley (2004) Ivan (2004) Dennis (2005) Stan (2005) Dean (2007) Felix (2007)Noel (2007) Gustav (2008) Ike (2008) Igor (2010)Tomas (2010)
Hurricanes with male names are more deadly, too.. by the way..
PWN'D
Idiot!
Republicans are two faced liars and talk out of every oriface, first they say, theres no such thing as global warming and climate change then when we have more bad weather than ever they blame Obama for declaring more emergencies (because there have been more due to warming) than their boy Bush, now they say we should have no government or fema let the states pay for it themselves, then their state gets wacked and they cry to the President for help!
All this time Rick Perry has been PRAYING for rain. He should have been praying for a Hurricane.
Today will be our 92 days straight 100+ degree temp.
Katia come to Texas. You will be welcomed here.
Maybe you should kick Rick Perry out of Texas and then you'll get your rain! I think God probably considers Perry that annoying kid who thinks everything should go his way, and is rightfully ignoring him!
Another hurricane whose effects will be vastly over-stated by the global warming cabal-controlled leftist media. Guess what idiot sheep? We've had bad hurricanes before and we've YET to see one this year.
Tell that to the people who will be without power for the next week. The people who lost loved ones and the people whose homes were destroyed. YES it was less powerful than it could have been but the sheer number of people who were in it's way made it a potentially dangerous storm.
36 dead and rising, VT is under water, and parts of NC are inaccessible. Compared to past hurricanes, perhaps not as bad, but still a notable storm that caused major damage and loss of life regardless. Had the eye of the storm not been disrupted by battering NC before coming north, MD, DE, NJ and NY would have had much, much more damage and loss of life along the lines of what was originally warned about.
Richard, dont look at the national news look up news for eastern NC. Irene might not have been a cat 3 but it did major damage to a lot of places in NC. Could it have been worse, sure but it is still bad even though the major media has not mentioned NC very much.
The Northern East Coast is not built for hurricanes. The South have levies, and different building codes. The North has much older structures, some as early as the birth of this nation. They do not normally get this kind of weather and therefore the destruction was much greater than it would have been had it hit the South.
What the hell is wrong with you?
Where do idiots like you come from? probably the same place glen beck and his ilk come from.
GOD'S Will be done.
God's will? He's dying? Excellent, maybe all the wars can stop now.
Religion = War & Pain. Just except death.
nice try CNN, we know you'd like to see another big hurricane to help ratings, but nobody's buying that a tropical storm off the coast of Africa w/ 40 mph is newsworthy. Move back over to Middle East riots coverage or the weak economy, you have a better chance there at a story.
Um, Pete...virtually all Atlantic hurricanes originate as tropical storms off the coast of Africa. Maybe you should educate yourself before posting nonsense.
Newsworthy? No. Something to keep an eye on? Definitely. Some of the biggest hurricanes in the past start out from the african side of the Atlantic. I'm not saying it will become a Cat5, but it is something to pay attention to, especially for those living on the east coast.
God's will....Will be done.
GOD? Haha people still beleive in GOD? Might as well say Santa Claus' will be done . . . .
I hope "God's Will" sweeps you out to see.. You probably think humans were plopped on earth by a giant pastry tube, too? I pity the fool.
and yes, I meant to type "see" as a pun for your obvious blindness to the plain and simple beautiful and destructive act of nature. Your idiocy humors me and causes puns that I cannot control.
You always have god when your to nieve to understand.
Aw they grow up so fast
Wow, I clicked on the link just to SEE where the system is forming. Now I have to go to the NOAA site.
I hope someone from CNN reads this.
The NOAA site is the best place for factual information about hurricanes without the media hype and scary adjectives. The Weather Channel storm tracker is pretty good too. This article is two sentences long and they still manage to say it "barrelled across the Atlantic".
Try wundergound.com. Check out the WunderMap (don't forget to click on both Sattelite and Hurricane). You can also select/display all the computer models.
I know, total weak sauce.
@Joe – lol, you are totally right man. I am pretty damn liberal but this "barreled across the Atlantic" stuff is just hilarious and stupid. CNN a bunch of a** clowns
This hurricane name (Katia) replaced Katrina's name since it was retired due to its destructive force and loss of life. Hopefully Katia doesn't do the same.
Not true at all
The hurricane name list changes every single year. I think Katrina was retired, but that's not why this storm is called Katia.
Yes it is ding dongs. Do some research.They recycle the names every six years, and since Katrina was retired in 2005, Katia's name was injected in her place this rotation.
you might want to read about hurricanes and the way they are named. They never use the same name for any hurricane for as long as they have been tracking them. You can to go various websites and see all the hurricanes ever named and tracked. Inform yourself please!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Irene_%282005%29
WEIRD!!!!!!! Must be a fake wiki page! Surely there was never an Irene before.. or a KATRINA – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_Storm_Katrina_%281999%29
Citing from Wikipedia is auto-fail. Maybe citing from the NOAA site would be more convincing?
Check out the third paragraph – http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2006/s2607.htm
Hey Dustin I thought god named all these storms?
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