Good evening everyone. Sorry that I didn’t post much over the past few days, but I had to work. However, I was still following things in the Tropical Atlantic. Looks like we may have another depression or storm soon. The disturbance in the Eastern Atlantic that we discussed at the end of the week has a probability of 80 percent to become a tropical cyclone. Julia has weakened, and is barely hanging on to tropical storm status, and Karl has since dissipated after moving inland over Southeastern Mexico on Friday afternoon.

The story now is Hurricane Igor. Once a powerful hurricane with winds just below the threshold for a Category Five Hurricane at 155 miles per hour, has gradually weakened to a Category One system with minimal hurricane force winds of 75 miles per hour. It is still making a beeline for Bermuda, which recently experienced a wind gust of 93 miles per hour as of the 11:00 PM EDT Advisory from the National Hurricane Center. Pressure has gone up to 955 millibars, or 28.20 inches of Hg (Mercury), but it has been rising. The center of Igor is just passing to the west of Bermuda, which is not good news since that means that the island is experiencing the full fury of the storm’s strongest part.

Igor, which became the strongest storm of the 2010 season is a huge hurricane. Its hurricane force winds extend some 90 miles from the eye while the tropical storm force winds reach some 345 miles. What that means is that Hurricane Igor has a diameter of approximately 690 miles! Typhoon Tip is the largest and also strongest tropical cyclone on record. The storm, which occurred in the Western Pacific in October 1979, had maximum sustained winds of 190 miles per hour, and a minimum central pressure of 870 millibars, or 25.69 inches of Hg (Mercury). It was also a storm that had a diameter of 1,380 miles, or exactly twice the size of Igor. Returning to the Atlantic, Hurricane Floyd was a vast system with a diameter of 580 miles back in September 1999.

Ten years before that, another large hurricane roamed the tropical waters of the Atlantic. Prior to Hurricane Hugo, there was Hurricane Gabrielle, which turned out to sea without threatening any land areas. However, Gabrielle was a vast storm with a diameter of 690 miles as well. The largest Atlantic Hurricane on record was Hurricane Olga back in 2001. Olga’s diameter was 863 miles. Hurricane Lili (1996) had a diameter of 806 miles. Hurricane Wilma, the strongest Atlantic Hurricane ever, was also a big storm with a diameter of 662 miles. Below is the ten largest storms in terms of diameter measured both in miles and kilometers:

1 Olga 2001 863 1,389
2 Lili 1996 806 1,296
3 Karl 2004 777 1,250
4 Helene 2006 748 1,204
5 Irene 1999 719 1,157
6 Gabrielle 1989 690 1,111
Florence 2006 690 1,111
8 Wilma 2005 662 1,065
Igor 2010 662 1,065
9 Keith 1988 633 1,018
Grace 1991 633 1,018

Hurricane Florence (2006) also impacted Bermuda while Grace (1991) became part of what was known as the Perfect Storm. Hurricane Gilbert (1988) was another huge storm that nearly took up the entire Gulf of Mexico at one point after striking the Yucatan as a Category Five storm. According to Wikipedia, Gilbert was 500 miles wide.