MIAMI - A slightly weakened Tropical Storm Zeta lingered over the open Atlantic on Sunday, a month after the end of the official Atlantic and Caribbean hurricane season.
The 27th named storm of a season that broke a whole catalogue of weather records, Zeta's center was about 1,115 miles (1,795 km) southwest of Portugal's Azores islands at 10 a.m. EST (1500 GMT), the US National Hurricane Center said.
The storm's maximum sustained winds were near 50 mph (85 kph), about 10 mph less than on Saturday, and a further weakening trend was forecast to begin during the next 24 hours, the Miami-based center said.
Zeta caps a record hurricane season that forced forecasters to choose storm names from the Greek alphabet after exhausting their annual list of 21 names.
The previous record for most tropical storms was 21, set in 1933. Fourteen of last year's storms strengthened into hurricanes, breaking the old record of 12 set in 1969.
Last year also saw the costliest hurricane on record when Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans and the US Gulf Coast in August, killing at least 1,300 people and causing more than $80 billion in damage.
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