Me and My Big Mouth
Just when I teased the climate claustrophobes out there about the hurricane season being quiet, too quiet, Mother Nature plants a big, fat tropical storm right in my kisser. If anyone gets hurt, I’m sorry. My bad.
The National Hurricane Center says a tropical depression has strengthened into Tropical Storm Chantal in the open Atlantic.
The storm is moving northeast at about 23 mph. The threshold for a tropical storm is sustained winds of 39 mph. When those winds reach 74 mph, it becomes a hurricane.
The storm had maximum sustained winds of 40 mph and was centered about 330 miles south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, according to theNational Hurricane Center.
The storm was expected to grow stronger but “as a tropical system it has a very short life ahead of it,” said James Franklin, a senior hurricane specialist with the National Hurricane Center.
Chantal, we hardly knew ye.