MIAMI (AP) – In a surprising but nonthreatening curtain call to the Atlantic’s busiest-ever hurricane season, Tropical Storm Zeta formed in the open ocean Friday, trying a record for the latest-developing named storm.

Although the National Hurricane Center said Zeta wasn’t forecast to become a hurricane or threaten land, Zeta’s development was significant because it came a month after the official Nov. 30 end to the unprecedented season.

The season brought a record 14 hurricanes, including Hurricane Katrina, which devastated Louisiana and Mississippi in August, killing more than 1,300 people in the most costly disaster in U.S. history. Forecasters exhausted their list of 21 proper names and began using the Greek alphabet to name storms for the first time.

Zeta – the 27th named storm of the season and the sixth letter of the Greek alphabet – was located about 1,065 miles southwest of the Azores, the National Hurricane Center reported at 4 p.m. EST Friday. Zeta had maximum sustained winds of 50 mph and was moving northwest near 7 mph.

Since record keeping began in 1851, only one other named storm has formed as late as Zeta, said Greg Romano, a National Weather Service spokesman. Tropical Storm Alice developed Dec. 30, 1954, and later became a hurricane before dissipating Jan. 5. Tropical storms develop when their winds exceed 39 mph, and hurricanes form when their winds exceed 74 mph.

Earlier this month, Hurricane Epsilon became only the fifth hurricane to form in December in 154 years of record keeping – though Romano said some storms could have fallen through the cracks before technology such as satellites was available to help find and track tropical systems.

Forecasters have said that hurricane seasons are going to be more active than usual for at least another decade.

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