2015 Atlantic Hurricane Season (kdenny)

Hurricane Ana
In late-May, a front draped across the southeastern United States split off a trough split in the western Caribbean. A passing tropical wave collided with the trough split, in a form of complex genesis, to create a new area of low pressure that slowly drifted westward on June 1st. Heavy wind shear from the trough over the eastern United States prohibited significant development at first, robbing the storm of needed instability, but soon retreated northwards as a warm front as a weak area of high pressure built in over the southeastern United States.

Late on June 2nd, a NOAA P-3 Hurricane Hunter visited the area of disturbed weather and determined it had gained sufficient organization to be considered a tropical depression, the first of the season. Throughout the day on the 3rd, the depression slowly organized and became Tropical Storm Ana, the first named storm of the season. Ana gradually gained organization as a trough began to influence Ana to the north. By June 5th, Ana had reached moderate tropical storm intensity and was beginning to move to the northeast. Hurricane watches and warnings were issued for the west coast of Florida on the 6th as Ana approached hurricane status. Ana made landfall as a minimal Category 1 hurricane early on the 7th of June and quickly weakened as it moved inland before dissipating on the 8th.

Hurricane Ana brought $128 million (2015 USD) dollars in property damage to the sunshine state, mostly from flooding as a result of heavy rain over the Tampa area. Numerous tornadoes were also reported with Ana, with an EF-3 tornado forming from a squall line in central Polk county.