Hurricane Epsilon, the 14th hurricane of a record-breaking Atlantic storm season, defied expectations that it would weaken over cool Atlantic waters on Saturday and continued to churn slowly eastward, Reuters reported. Epsilon's maximum sustained winds at 10 a.m. EST (1500 GMT) remained at 75 mph (120 kph), just over the threshold for a tropical storm to be categorized as a hurricane, but the cyclone posed no threat to land, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. The storm was about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) west of Portugal's Azores islands and moving to the east at 12 mph (19 kph). "Epsilon is a tenacious tropical cyclone which has maintained hurricane intensity over cool waters and apparent unfavorable atmospheric conditions," the Miami-based hurricane center said. But it reiterated its expectation that the storm would steadily weaken over the next few days. Hurricanes are normally spawned over warmer Atlantic waters further south. They need warm water to gain power and higher than normal sea surface temperatures this year have helped the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, which formally ended on Wednesday, enter the record books in a multitude of ways. Epsilon, the sixth hurricane to occur in December since records began in 1851, was named like its four predecessors for a letter in the Greek alphabet after the official list of storm names for 2005 was exhausted. This season has witnessed the most tropical storms on record -- 26. It has seen the most hurricanes, with 14. The highest number of hurricanes previously on record was 12, in 1969, and the highest number of named storms was 21, in 1933. The long-term average is 10 storms per season, six of which become hurricanes.
