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Danny becomes the first hurricane of the Atlantic season

Posted at 12:44 PM, Aug 20, 2015
and last updated 2015-08-20 19:44:00-04

Tropical Storm Danny strengthened into Hurricane Danny around 11 a.m. Thursday as wind speeds increased to around 75 mph.  Hurricanes have winds of 74 mph or stronger.  This makes the storm the first hurricane of the 2015 Atlantic tropical season.   By 5 pm, winds had increased to 80 mph.  A recon aircraft will investigate the storm on Friday.

Danny is about 1000 miles away from the Windward Islands and is only tracking west-northwestward around 10 mph.

The forecast track from the National Hurricane Center brings the center of Danny to around St. John's, Antigua, Monday morning , and over Puerto Rico Tuesday.  Danny will encounter some dry air and will weaken to a tropical storm.

The track from that point on is still up in the air.  Many of the computer models are moving Danny to the northwest towards the Bahamas and Florida.  However, this is for the time period of mid to late next week, so forecast precision is not very high.  Essentially, Danny bears watching for residents of the southeastern United States, but a lot will change over the next week.  There is also the potential for Danny to hit some wind shear in addition to the dry air, and this would greatly weaken the storm.

We will continue to provide updates over the next week.  You can find the latest information and track guidance in our CBS 6 Hurricane Tracker & our CBS 6 Weather Authority App.