In the last 48 hours, Danny has found an area of calm along with less dry air thus allowing the system to mature becoming the Atlantic’s fourth named storm and within barely the last 24 hours, the first hurricane and first major hurricane too. Current winds are 115 mph.

Danny has become a Category 3 storm pretty far south also. The last time we’ve seen a major hurricane as far south as Danny was Fred back in 2009 according to Capital Weather Gang.

Interestingly, despite the season being slow and expected to be one of the quietest years, ironically, the development into the first major hurricane is ahead of normal. The average for first ‘major’ is September 4.

Also, despite the slow start and very hostile environment, storms do develop and can become very dangerous. Take Andrew in 1992. An El Nino year and a year in which there was no named storm until it’s formation. We all know what Andrew did to South Florida. IT ONLY TAKES ONE!

Paul Pastelok of AccuWeather has shown in a recent blog and video how the current US pattern is developing very similarly to August 1992 when Andrew developed and hit S FL as a Cat 5 beast.

This storm is tiny, in fact it’s hurricane-force wind field is so small that is can nearly fit within the eye of Super Typhoon Atsani, currently in the west Pacific.

Check out this amazing comparison by Glenn Schwartz between Hurricane Sandy and Danny.

All major forecast models agree on Danny peaking around about now and is likely to begin ingesting the sea od dry, dusty Saharan air later this evening, commencing the weakening process.

Water vapour shows the amount of dusty air out ahead.

Notice that NHC takes Danny back to tropical storm intensity even on reaching the Lesser Antilles.

Although this system is unlikely to have significant impact on the Lesser Antilles, Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, rainfall will be very welcome.

While I don’t see Danny causing much of an issue to the US coast, I do however see an increased probability for particularly IN-CLOSE tropical threats as we head towards the climatological peak of hurricane season (Sep 10) because heights are building across the northern US while they lower beneath.

Interestingly the GFS ensemble

Like the above GFS ENSEMBLE, the EPS Control too shows the ridge over top of the trough and this opens up the US coast to trouble if there happens to be something develop offshore. Remember how warm those waters are compared to normal!

See today’s video for the discussion.

[s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)]

[/s2If][s2If current_user_cannot(access_s2member_level1)][magicactionbox id=”18716″][/s2If]