Tropical Storm Zeta expected to become Category 1 hurricane Monday

RALEIGH, N.C. — Tropical Storm Zeta is expected to strengthen into a hurricane Monday as it moves through the Caribbean Sea and into the Gulf of Mexico.

According to the National Hurricane Center, Zeta is currently located about 210 miles southeast of Cozumel.

The storm has maximum sustained winds of 70 miles per hour, and it is moving northwest at 9 miles per hour.

Zeta is forecast to move over the Yucatan Peninsula on Monday–likely as a Category 1 hurricane. It will then head into the Gulf of Mexico and start tracking toward Louisiana, where it is expected to make landfall.

Louisiana has felt the brunt of the record setting 2020 hurricane season. So far, four named storms–Cristobal, Delta, Laura, and Marco–have made landfall in the state.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards urged his state’s citizens to monitor the storm, and the state activated its Crisis Action Team.

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Zeta broke the record for the previous earliest 27th Atlantic named storm that formed Nov. 29, 2005, Klotzbach said.

This year’s season has so many storms that the hurricane center has turned to the Greek alphabet after running out of official names.

Zeta is the furthest into the Greek alphabet the Atlantic season has gone. There was also a Tropical Storm Zeta in 2005, but that year had 28 storms because meteorologists later went back and found they missed one, which then became an “unnamed named storm,” Klotzbach said.