MIAMI - Tropical Storm Zeta weakened and began to break apart on Friday, bringing a final and overdue end to the costliest and busiest Atlantic hurricane season on record, US forecasters said.
By 4 pm EST (2100 GMT), Zeta was a tropical depression around 900 miles (1,450 km) east-northeast of the Leeward Islands of the eastern Caribbean, with maximum sustained winds near 30 mph (45 kph). But the US National Hurricane Center said Zeta was rapidly losing its tropical characteristics.
"I suppose it is only fitting that the record-breaking Atlantic hurricane season ends with a record-breaking storm," wrote hurricane center forecaster Stacy Stewart in the Miami-based center's last bulletin on Zeta.
"Today Zeta surpassed 1954's Alice No. 2 as the longest-lived tropical cyclone to form in December and cross over into the next year. Zeta was also the longest-lived January tropical cyclone."
Hurricane records fell like dominoes during 2005, producing renewed debate - but no clear answers - about the potential impact of global warming on tropical cyclones.
Zeta ensured that the past season, which formally ended on Nov. 30, had the largest accumulated cyclonic energy, or "ACE," of any hurricane season since records began 150 years ago, the center said.
With 27, it had the most named tropical storms, beating out 1933's 21. Its 14 hurricanes were a record, besting 12 in 1969.
There were so many storms that forecasters for the first time were forced to use storm names from the Greek alphabet, such as Zeta, after exhausting their annual list of 21 names.
Last year also saw the costliest hurricane on record, when Katrina inundated New Orleans at the end of August, killing 1,300 people and causing more than $80 billion in damage.
Tropical storms, which are given names when their winds reach 39 mph (63 kph), are reclassified as hurricanes once those winds reach 74 mph (119 kph).
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