Danielle is Earliest Ever 4th-Named Tropical Storm in Atlantic Season

While not of direct interest to those in the United States...other than the resulting rip currents off the southeastern coast of Texas...Tropical Storm Danielle, with its relatively light maximum sustained winds of 45 mph, still poses a big threat to eastern Mexico when it hits there in the next several hours.  Flash flooding and mudslides could threaten lives and property, making Danielle potentially the worst tropical storm so far this year regarding its effects.  And it is a record-setting year in the Atlantic Hurricane Season, with 2016 being the first time that four named tropical storms have occurred this early in June.  However, other than Alex in January, which grew into a flow-blown hurricane but steered clear of land in the Atlantic, the other three have been tropical storms.  Still, to already be through the letter "D" is amazing considering that the El Niño effect of warm Pacific waters, an inhibitor of Atlantic tropical storm formation, is still there and won't dissipate until later in the hurricane season...

This phenomenon of many named tropical systems so early in the season reminds me of 2005, when the number of named storms was so great that it exhausted the alphabet and Greek letters had to used to name the final ones.  Let us hope that 2016 won't be like that year, which also produced three very nasty hurricanes: Katrina, Rita, and Wilma...