Brad DeLong
http://news.myway.com/top/article/id/393858|top|03-27-2004::00:25|reuters.html
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 U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami were helping the Brazilian Weather Service to 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.
He said the storm was a Category 1 hurricane -- the least powerful on forecasters' five-level scale -- with winds somewhere between 74 and 95 miles per hour.
"It's about 225 miles east-southeast of the Brazilian coast and it's moving westward at about 7 miles per hour," he 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 tomorrow or the next day," he said.
However, Brazil's state Weather Forecasting and Climatic Studies Center (CPTEC) played down the U.S. hurricane classification.
"Our information shows that it is not a hurricane. We still classify it as a tropical cyclone," Virginia Nogueira, a duty meteorologist, told Reuters.
"The forecast is that it will come closer to the coast, provoking rains in the southern states of Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, and strong winds, but not causing anything very unusual," she said.
Ports in southern Brazil said earlier no preparations were being made for the storm and work continued as usual.
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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Panic In Brazil Maru
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