page_title: Timeline of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season
section_title: December
hierarchical_section_title: Timeline of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season / Timeline / December
caption_attribution_description: The official hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean runs from June 1 to November 30 each year, but on very rare occasions, tropical storms and even hurricanes form outside the season. In 150 years of records, a hurricane has formed outside of the season on only four other occasions. But with so many records broken by the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, it seems almost unsurprising to find Hurricane Epsilon ushering in December and bumping that out-of-season-hurricane record up to five storms. Epsilon formed in the Central Atlantic about halfway between the Azores Islands and Bermuda on November 29, 2005. This image shows Hurricane Epsilon in the mid-Atlantic, as observed by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite on December 4, 2005, at 13:30 UTC (10:30 a.m. local time). At that time, the hurricane had peak sustained winds of 140 kilometers per hour (85 miles per hour). That intensity appears to be the strongest the storm will achieve, according to forecasts from early on December 5, 2005. The storm had been sustaining winds from 120-140 kilometers per hour (75-85 mph) for roughly 48 hours at that time. This longevity ensures that Epsilon, despite having four other storms for company in the out-of-season-hurricane neighborhood, will nevertheless go down alone in the record books in at least one respect: it has broken a new record for the longest-lived December hurricane.
context_page_description: The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was an event in the annual tropical cyclone season in the north Atlantic Ocean. It was the most active Atlantic hurricane season in recorded history, and the most extreme in the satellite era. Officially, the season began on June 1, 2005 and ended on November 30, 2005. These dates, adopted by convention, historically delimit the period in each year when most tropical systems form. The season's first storm, Tropical Storm Arlene, developed on June 8. The final storm, Tropical Storm Zeta, formed in late December and persisted until January 6, 2006. Zeta is only the second December Atlantic storm in recorded history to survive into January, joining Hurricane Alice in 1955.
  The season's impact was widespread and catastrophic. Its storms touched virtually every part of the Atlantic basin. Altogether, there were 28 named tropical storms during the season, exhausting the annual pre-designated list and resulting in the usage of six Greek letter names. A record 15 tropical storms attained hurricane strength, of which a record seven intensified into major hurricanes.
context_section_description: December 2
  18:00 UTC (2:00 p.m. AST) – Tropical Storm Epsilon intensifies to hurricane strength about 980 mi (1,580 km) east-northeast of Bermuda.
  December 5
  06:00 UTC (2:00 a.m. AST) – Hurricane Epsilon reaches its peak intensity with maximum sustained winds of 86 mph (138 km/h) and a minimum barometric pressure of 981 mbar (28.97 inHg) over the eastern Atlantic.
  December 7
  18:00 UTC (2:00 p.m. AST) – Hurricane Epsilon weakens into a tropical storm about 920 mi (1,480 km) southwest of the Azores.
  December 8
  12:00 UTC (8:00 a.m. AST) – Tropical Storm Epsilon weakens into a tropical depression.
  18:00 UTC (2:00 p.m. AST) – Tropical Depression Epsilon degenerates to a remnant low and later dissipates.
  December 30
  00:00 UTC (8:00 p.m. AST, December 29) – Tropical Depression Thirty forms over the eastern Atlantic.
  06:00 UTC (2:00 a.m. AST) – Tropical Depression Thirty strengthens into Tropical Storm Zeta.
caption: Hurricane Epsilon displaying a classic annular structure while churning in the Central Atlantic
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