Hurricane Tammy weakens to a post-tropical cyclone, though its hurricane-force winds remain

Hurricane Tammy was downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone early Thursday, though it was still producing hurricane-force winds as it moved closer to Bermuda.

Tammy was forecast to bring swells that could affect the northern Leeward Islands, the British and U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Bermuda over the next couple of days, according to the National Hurricane Center.

As of 5 a.m. Thursday, Tammy’s maximum sustained winds had dropped to 85 mph, with hurricane-force winds extending 195 miles. It was located 395 miles east-southeast of Bermuda, traveling north at 12 mph.

The storm is expected to shift northwest then west-northwest on Friday.

Tammy made landfall on Barbuda with 85 mph winds on Oct. 21, then lashed the Leeward Islands. The hurricane swiped the far eastern Caribbean two weeks after Tropical Storm Phillippe dumped 6 to 8 inches of rain over Antigua and Barbuda and knocked out electricity there, according to The Associated Press.

So far this season in the Atlantic, there have been 19 named storms, seven of which were hurricanes. Of those, three were major hurricanes, meaning Category 3 or above.

Those were Hurricane Lee, a rare Category 5; Hurricane Franklin, a Category 4; and Hurricane Idalia, which made landfall on Florida’s Big Bend region at Category 3 strength on Aug. 30.

The remaining storm names for 2023 are Vince and Whitney. If all those names end up being used this season, the National Hurricane Center would turn to the supplemental list of names from the World Meteorological Association. In previous years, the Greek alphabet was used for additional storm names — which had only happened twice before — during the record-shattering hurricane seasons in 2005 and 2020.

Hurricane season officially runs through Nov. 30.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.