What Is A 'Zombie' Tropical Storm?
A week after slamming into Bermuda as a Category 1 hurricane, Paulette is back from the dead ― this time as a tropical storm spinning off the coast of North Africa.
Paulette made landfall in Bermuda on Sept. 14 ― the first hurricane to strike the British island territory since Gonzalo in 2014 ― before turning east and dissipating into the Atlantic. But remnants of Paulette regained tropical storm strength late Monday southeast of the Azores, an archipelago off the coast of Portugal, with maximum sustained winds reaching 60 mph on Tuesday.
The so-called “zombie” storm is a fitting phenomenon for a hyperactive Atlantic hurricane season, which has already seen so many storms that forecasters ran out of names and were forced to move on to the Greek alphabet.
“Welcome back to the land of the living, Tropical Storm #Paulette,” the National Weather Service wrote in a Tuesday post to Twitter.
Because 2020, we now have Zombie Tropical Storms. Welcome back to the land of the living, Tropical Storm #Paulettepic.twitter.com/98QNEaTr4S
— National Weather Service (@NWS) September 22, 2020
The good news is Paulette is not forecast to make a third run across the Atlantic. It began weakening Tuesday and is expected to become post-tropical later this week.
The last hurricane to fizzle out and re-spawn as a tropical storm was Ivan in 2004, which struck Alabama as a Category 3 before making a loop over the Florida peninsula and making landfall in Louisiana as a tropical depression.
Zombie #Paulette is back... Fifteen days after it first formed, eight days after passing over Bermuda, and six days after it was declared to be extratropical, Paulette is back as a tropical cyclone. https://t.co/xD42sBbn8Hpic.twitter.com/QOq2hlu8b9
— Brian McNoldy (@BMcNoldy) September 22, 2020
The Atlantic basin has seen a frenzy of cyclone activity in 2020, and we’re only halfway through the official hurricane season.
Hurricane Sally made landfall in Alabama last week as a slow-moving...
