The first hurricane ever reported in the south Atlantic swirled off the coast of Brazil on Friday, and forecasters said it could make landfall in the South American country during the weekend.
Although it was far outside their usual territory, forecasters at the US National Hurricane Center in Miami were helping the Brazilian Weather Service track the unprecedented system.
"There's problems that happen when hurricanes occur in areas that we've never seen before," said hurricane center meteorologist Eric Blake.
The storm was a Category 1 hurricane -- the least powerful on forecasters' five-level scale -- with winds that were clocked at somewhere between 119 and 153 kph.
"It's about 362 km east-southeast of the Brazilian coast and it's moving westward at about 11 kph," Blake said.
Blake said some of the forecasting computer models showed the storm turning away from the coast before making landfall, but he said it was too soon to say if that would happen.
"It has an eye and thunderstorms around the center, and we're looking at the possibility of [landfall in] southeast Brazil sometime [today or tomorrow]," he said.
The storm has not been given a name because it has formed in an area where meteorologists have made no provision for doing so. In parts of the world where storms usually form, forecasters assign men's and women's names in alphabetical order to help keep track of them.
It was too soon to say if the hurricane would break up before it made landfall.
"Right now it's too early to tell. There's nothing obvious to say this storm is going to weaken," Blake said.
He noted that it is autumn in Brazil, an active time of year in regions that normally have hurricanes, such as the Atlantic Ocean off the US east coast.
Ship captains have reported hurricanes for centuries and, since the 1960s, weather forecasters have used satellites to track storm activity around the globe.
But a hurricane has never previously been reported in the south Atlantic.
Blake said there have been "questionable" tropical weather systems tracked in the area before, but none had developed into a hurricane.
"This one's broken all the rules," he said.
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