Nadine likely to become one of Atlantic's longest lived storms - WBTV 3 News, Weather, Sports, and Traffic for Charlotte, NC

Nadine likely to become one of Atlantic's longest lived storms

Posted: Updated:
By Ashley Batey - email

CHARLOTTE, NC (WBTV) - The latest tropical system to form in the Atlantic developed over two weeks ago; and Nadine is still going strong.  While this storm hasn't been the strongest or the deadliest, it may nevertheless go down in the record books as one of the longest lived storms ever to form in the Atlantic basin.

The typical life span of a tropical storm in the Atlantic is about 10 days.  Nadine has already exceeded that by nearly a week.  Nadine has already been going strong for 16 days, since a cluster of storms strengthened into a tropical storm on Sept 12 and briefly into a hurricane on the 14th.  That makes 17 days total if you count the time the system spent as Tropical Depression 14 shortly before receiving its name, already the longest lived storm since Alberto in 2000.

And Nadine hasn't worn itself out just yet.  The storm is forecast to hold together for another week as it teeters around the Azores in the Northeastern Atlantic.  Still a strong storm, Nadine's winds are still blowing at 60 mph as it slowly moves Southwest.  Over the next few days it is expected to turn back to the Northwest.

If the forecasts are correct, this storm will be the 5th member of a very small group of storms that have life spans greater than three weeks.

The longest duration of any storm ever recorded in the Atlantic was 28 days from Hurricane San Ciriaco, which killed over 3,100 people in Puerto Rico.  Hurricane Ginger holds the record of the longest storm duration since the modern naming convention began.  That storm lasted just over 27 days in 1971.

Nadine is currently the only area of concern in the Atlantic.