Hurricane Wilma began as Tropical Depression 24 last weekend, and has grown into a category 5 hurricane very quickly. Winds jumped from 80 mph at 5 pm Tuesday to 175 mph by 5 am Wednesday. Wilma also produced the lowest barometric pressure ever in an Atlantic hurricane at 26.05 inches. This beats Hurricane Gilbert's previous record of 26.22", and surpasses Katrina (26.63") and Rita (26.49") from this year.

Wilma's forecast track is to hit the northeast corner of the Yucatan Peninsula, and then head towards southwestern Florida this weekend. Updated advisories and track forecasts can be found at:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/

Hurricane Wilma is the twenty-first (and final) name on the 2005 Atlantic tropical storm list. Should more systems develop, the storms will be named according to the Greek alphabet. This has never happened in weather history.

Until this year, the most number of named Atlantic storms was 21 in 1933, and the next most-active season was 1995 with 19 named storms.

The storms are named using six rotating lists of 21 names. The names of deadly or costly storms are retired and replaced with a new name.

The process of naming tropical storms and hurricanes began in 1953, using only women's names. In 1979, the current system of alternating male and female names was implemented. Since then, we have never passed the T name until this year.


Sources: National Hurricane Center, World Meteorological Center