Hurricane Oscar is strengthening in its trek west across the Central Atlantic and is expected to become a Category 2 cyclone over the next 36 hours.

Oscar, the 15th named storm of the 2018 season and 8th hurricane, reached hurricane status as of 5 p.m. Sunday. As of the 8 a.m. advisory from the National Hurricane Center, Oscar has 80 mph winds and is about 620 miles southeast of Bermuda.

The storm is no threat to the U.S. It is forecast to begin moving north tomorrow and then to the northeast as a high pressure system approaches from the east and a low pressure trough squeezes it from the west.

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Oscar builds on what has become an above average hurricane season in terms of named storms and hurricanes. A typical season has six hurricanes through Oct. 28 and just 11 named storms.

This year has also included 85 named storm days when the normal is 54 and 123 units of accumulated cyclone energy, or ACE. ACE is a measure of a hurricane's strength and longevity. A normal year has 97 ACE units.

"The 15 named storms this year puts 2018 in the upper 15% for the most named storms in an Atlantic season," said Weather Underground co-founder Jeff Masters in his Cat 6 blog. "In records going back to 1851, only 22 out of 168 seasons have had 15 named storms or more (including 2018)."

The hyperactive year of 2005 had 28 named storms. In 1933 there were 20 named storms.

Klotzbach said for the first time since reliable satellite imagery was available, about 1970, all Northern Hemisphere tropical basis will have above-average seasonal values of ACE.

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Oscar is also notable in that it is the 7th storm to exist as a subtropical cyclone at some point in it's lifetime. Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach said this is a record for the most subtropical storms in a single season. The previous record was five in 1969.

Subtropical storms have characteristics of both mid-latitude cyclones - similar to the winter storms that travel west to east - and tropical cyclones that gain power through the convective energy of thunderstorms.

Typically, the wind field on a sub tropical storm is wider than a tropical storm. Whereas a tropical storm may have its strongest winds at its center, a sub tropical storm can have its strongest winds further out.

Subtropical storms were first given names from the six-year rotating list of tropical cyclone names in 2002.

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