Tropical storm Grace just formed between the Azores Islands and Spain. It formed over 21 deg C waters (see link), which is much cooler than you usually need to form a tropical storm (26 deg C). It spun up quickly out of a much larger low pressure area and had a tiny eye, and is a tiny storm. The tropical advisory 12 hours earlier did not even identify the area as a place where a storm might form. There is some discussion related to global warming about whether the number of tropical storms have increased: a storm like this would probably have been missed before satellites.

The forecast is for it to weaken quickly, but we shall see; they kept being wrong for some very late season hurricanes over cool water in this part of Atlantic in 2005.
Chris

• Grace