Kate became the fourth hurricane of the Atlantic season Wednesday as the storm moved across open water far from land, U.S. forecasters said. The hurricane's maximum sustained winds were 120 kilometers per hour (kph) about 450 kilometers north of Bermuda in the Atlantic Ocean, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said. While the storm remained far from the British territory, "swells from Kate will begin to affect Bermuda this morning and continue through the remainder of today," the NHC said. "These swells are likely to cause life-threatening surf and rip-current conditions." Kate, moving to the northeast, is the 11th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which lasts through November. The most powerful storm of the season so far was Hurricane Joaquin, a category-4 storm that hit the Bahamas in early October and caused the sinking of a cargo ship and its 33 crew members. Before that, Tropical Storm Erika killed 30 people and caused extensive damage in the small Caribbean island of Dominica in August.
