Posted on 25 Aug 2010
She started out as just a tropical depression over the Atlantic Ocean that grew into a tropical storm but by Monday, Tropical Storm Danielle spun up to hurricane strength to become the second hurricane of the Atlantic storm season.
Now hurricane forecasters are calling for Danielle to strengthen over the next day or two, but is not expected to threaten land.
Danielle is currently located about 850 miles (1,400 km) west of the southernmost Cape Verde islands and its winds are reaching as high as 75 mph (120 kph), which marks it as a Category 1 storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale. The strongest storm on the scale is a Category 5.
Though the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season has been relatively quiet to date -- the only other hurricane was Hurricane Alex -- forecasters still expect it to be an active season, with 14 to 20 named storms, eight to 12 of which are expected to become hurricanes.
The peak of hurricane season lasts from late August through early October, when ocean waters are at their warmest. The entire Atlantic season lasts from June 1 to November 30.
