Hurricane Fred became the second named hurricane of the 2015 Atlantic storm season but is going to be remembered for some unusual records.
The storm is the easternmost hurricane ever to form in the tropical Atlantic Ocean. It brought the very first hurricane warning for the Cape Verde Islands and is the first hurricane that can be captured in the region by weather satellites.
“According to the official Atlantic tropical cyclone record, which begins in 1851, Fred is the first hurricane to pass through the Cape Verde Islands since 1892. We caution, however, that the database is less reliable prior to the satellite era (mid 1960s onward),” the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
While 10 hurricanes have been in the area of Cape Verde, Fred is the first that will hit Cape Verde while still a hurricane. The peak winds for the storm were 85 m.p.h. on Monday morning.
The storm is expected to strengthen for a few days but will dissipate in the open ocean before reaching any other land mass.
Forecasters say that overall activity for this storm season is below average because of the strong El Nino.
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) has confirmed the presence of a new named storm in the Atlantic Ocean.
Tropical Storm Erika has sustained winds of 45 m.p.h. and as of noon eastern time was about 700 miles east of the Leeward Islands with a westward path at 20 m.p.h.
A tropical storm watch has been posted throughout the region for islands that are in desperate need of rain because of a sustained drought. However, the storm is expected to continue to gain strength and reach hurricane status.
Forecast models are showing extremely different paths for the storm, from dissipating before making significant landfall to becoming a huge Category 4 storm that would strike South Carolina.
Erika is the fifth named storm in the Atlantic during the 2015 storm season. Danny was the only storm to reach hurricane status, peaking as a Category 3 storm. Danny dissipated on Monday because of a dry air mass moving across the region.
The NHC said the Air Force’s Hurricane Hunters are going to make a mass through the storm and provide feedback on the storm’s intensity.
Tropical Storm Danny, located far out over the Atlantic, is likely to become a hurricane.
Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center (NHC) say the storm is maintaining winds of 50 m.p.h. and models are showing the storm strengthening into hurricane status within the next few days.
The storm’s track could take it into Puerto Rico. If the storm continues to strengthen, it could strike Cuba as early as Wednesday. The models say it’s too early to determine if the storm could impact the United States.
If the storm reaches hurricane status, it would be the first named storm of the 2015 Atlantic hurricane season to reach that level.
The NHC said the storm is being driven west by a “subtropical ridge of high pressure” and that the conditions around the storm are beneficial to increasing strength.
The Atlantic hurricane season lasts until November 30th.
Scientists conducting experiments in the Atlantic Ocean believe they may have found evidence of the great flood that carried Noah’s Ark.
The discovery was found by German scientists who were collecting marine life from the ocean floor. Instead, they pulled up manganese nodules from three miles below the surface of the water.
Some of the balls of manganese were as large as bowling balls. Underwater cameras showed the nodules all over the ocean floor in a place that scientists said they should not be found.
“These metallic pellets provide strong evidence that most seafloor sediments were deposited rapidly, not slowly and gradually over millions of years,” Dr. Jake Hebert of the Institute for Creation Research wrote in an article this month. “Are these nodules evidence of the Genesis Flood?”
Hebert points out apparent flaws in the methods secular scientists use to date the nodules.
“Secular scientists claim that nodules grow at the extremely slow rate of just a few millimeters per million years,” he explains. “Yet manganese nodules have consistently been observed growing in lakes and man-made reservoirs, as well as on debris fragments from World Wars I and II, at rates hundreds of thousands of times faster than these calculated rates. This is just one more indication that there are serious problems with radioisotope dating methods!”
A pregnant South Carolina woman attempted to kill herself and her three children by driving her minivan into the Atlantic Ocean.
Now police officials are saying that 31-year-old Ebony Wilkerson talked about demons before she drove away from the home according to her sister who called police. Daytona Beach stopped Wilkerson but she appeared lucid and didn’t qualify to be held under the state’s mental health act.
“The children were in the back seat, they were buckled in and were not in distress. Although the sergeant said she looked like she had some mental illness, she did not fit the criteria for going into custody under the Baker Act,” Police Chief Mike Chitwood told Fox News.
Two hours later, Wilkerson drove herself and her three children, ages 10, 9 and 3, into the ocean. Bystanders, police and lifeguards pulled the children from the van as it began to sink.
The children are in the custody of state welfare authorities.
It sounds like the plot of a thriller movie but it’s reality.
A “ghost ship” has been floating loose in the upper Atlantic Ocean and is believed to be heading to the British coast filled with aggressive, disease-ridden, cannibalistic rats.
The Lyubov Orlova was being towed by a second ship after it was seized from its previous owner because of unpaid debts. During the towing process, the boat broke free from the moorings and disappeared into the Atlantic. It has only been spotted from the air a few times and has sent out signals twice in March 2013 but then went silent.
Experts are now warning that the recent wave of severe storms throughout the region could be driving the ship directly into the British coast.
The belief comes from the fact the lifeboats attached to the ship have not activated indicating they have touched down in the ocean. If the ship had sunk, all the lifeboats would have had an emergency beacon activate.
If the ship were to make landfall, the disease infested rats could devastate the local rat population and be a major risk to humans for diseases like bubonic plague.