Wind

Perhaps as a result of Hurricane Katrina last year, newspapers and major internet news sites are quickly reporting that a minor storm has formed off the coast of Africa. It would take two weeks to hit us, if it even survives, but I guess we have to be on the lookout this time of year.

Still, weather forecasters said this would be a bad year for hurricanes, and this is only our fourth named storm. I wonder if they are trying to save face.

The storm was expected to go from Tropical Depression Four to Tropical Storm Debby, then perhaps within four days, to Hurricane Debby.

I've fixed my link at the right to the National Hurricane Center, which has a map of the storm.


Update

Carl in Louisiana writes:

At my first newspaper job in the 1980s, we had a copy editor who designed most of the front pages. He grew up in the age of Hurricane Audrey and often put weather stories on the front, even when tropical depressions formed off the coast of Africa. He was often ridiculed inside the office, as was the local TV station, which some of our editors accused of hyping storm coverage for ratings.
When I went back to the paper after Rita hit and devastated the area last September, a month after Katrina, I didn’t hear a whole lot of giggling when I mentioned the since-retired desk man who was always the first warning about storms that might approach the Gulf of Mexico.