User:HurricaneSpin/Bertha

The meteorological history of Hurricane Bertha spanned seventeen days, from July 3 to July 20, 2008. The tropical disturbance which eventually spawned Bertha developed from a well-defined tropical wave that crossed the west coast of Africa on July 1. Upon reaching the Atlantic Ocean, it was already accompanied by a closed surface low and a large area of convection. Within an environment of light vertical wind shear and marginally warm sea surface temperatures, it gradually developed and on 2 am AST July 3 (0600 UTC) had acquired enough organized convection to be designated a tropical depression about 220 n mi (405 km) south-southeast of the Cape Verde Islands. It strengthened into a tropical storm about 6 hours later and the National Hurricane Center declared the system a tropical storm and subsequently receiving the name Bertha.

Bertha’s maintained its strength of tropical storm during the next couple of days as the storm moved west-northwestward. Bertha reached warmer waters on July 6 and became the first hurricane of the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season early on 7 July while centered about 750 n mi (1390 km) east of the northern Leeward Islands. During the next several days, Bertha underwent a period of rapid intensification, which brought it into a category 3 hurricane with a minimum barometric pressure of about 952 millibar (hPa; 28.12 inHg) and with maximum wind speed of 125 mph (205 km/h).