Ophelia Builds Up Steam

Hurricane Ophelia battered Florida with rain as it built up strength on Sept. 8th, as shown in this image taken by NASA's Terra Satellite.

Since then, Ophelia has traveled northeast and sits a couple hundred miles off the shores of South Carolina where its 75 mile per hour winds are just strong enough to keep it classified as a Category 1 hurricane.

Ophelia's formation is unusual in that storm systems don't usually build strength just offshore - having rain bands extending over land usually break up storm formation.

The busy 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, highlighted by the destructive Hurricane Katrina, has already broken many seasonal records. The Atlantic hurricane season usually peaks between late August and mid-September, but meteorologists predict that we could be in store for another seven storms before the end of November.

Ophelia is the earliest "O" named system in the books, and scientists could run out of names before the end of the season. Some of the names left on the list include Rita, Tammy, and Wilma.

--Bjorn Carey

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Credit: NASA Earth Observatory