Tropical Storm Nigel intensified into a Category 1 hurricane early Monday morning and is expected to become a major hurricane by Tuesday, according to the National Hurricane Center, the sixth hurricane of the season.
A satellite image of Hurricane Lee crossing the Atlantic Ocean in September.
Nigel, which formed as a tropical storm on Saturday, grew into a Category 1 hurricane over the Atlantic early Monday morning, the NHC said.
The storm is located around 924 miles east-southeast of Bermuda as of 5 a.m. ET, the NHC said, and it is moving northwest towards the East Coast at a rate of about 12 miles per hour.
Nigel has maximum sustained winds of 80 mph and is expected to “rapidly strengthen into a major hurricane” on Tuesday, the NHC said.
Hurricanes of Category 3 and above are termed major and according to the Saffir-Simpson scale used by the NHC, a Category 3 hurricane packs winds of at least 111 mph.
Major hurricanes come with risks of “catastrophic wind damage and significant loss of life simply due to the strength of their winds,” the NHC said.
There are no warnings or watches in place for Hurricane Nigel over land.
Nigel could start to gradually weaken from late Wednesday, the NHC said.
- That’s how many hurricanes there have been in the Atlantic this hurricane season so far, including Nigel. The others are Hurricanes Don, Franklin, Idalia, Lee and Margot.
Including the hurricanes, there have been 14 named tropical storms this season so far. An average Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from 1 June to 30 November, has 14 named storms in total, seven of which become hurricanes, including three major hurricanes. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast 14 to 21 named storms for this season on account of ocean conditions, notably the “record-warm Atlantic” surface temperatures. Up to 11 of these are likely to become hurricanes, with up to five major hurricanes, the agency predicted.