Hurricane Gabrielle maps show the forecast track of the 7th named storm of 2025 Atlantic hurricane season
Gabrielle continued on its path as a major hurricane on Tuesday, days after forming in the Atlantic Ocean and becoming the seventh named storm of the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season.
Hurricane Gabrielle was likely to head farther out into the Atlantic, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said. A hurricane watch was issued for all of the Azores, an archipelago in the North Atlantic, and the NHC said the powerful hurricane would continue to generate swells that would affect the coasts of Bermuda and the U.S. East Coast, from North Carolina northward to Canada, for a few days.
"These swells are likely to cause life-threatening surf and rip current conditions," the center said.
Hurricane Gabrielle forecast and path
By Tuesday afternoon, Gabrielle was more than 520 miles east of Bermuda, tracking northeast at about 21 mph, the hurricane center said. Packing maximum sustained winds of about 130 mph, it strengthened early Monday into a Category 4 storm, which the center considers to be a major hurricane.
Tropical-storm-force winds extended outward some 140 miles from Gabrielle's center, according to forecasters.
"The center of Gabrielle will approach the Azores during the day on Thursday, and move across the island chain Thursday night into Friday," the hurricane center said in its 5 p.m. ET update on Tuesday.
Gabrielle took shape about one week after what was historically considered the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs annually from June 1 to Nov. 30 and has in the past become most active around Sept. 10.
Officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration initially predicted the 2025 season would be busier than usual and produce more named storms than an average year. Still, hurricane activity has so far been quieter than anticipated.
At the start of the season, NOAA's outlook suggested that between 13 and 19 named storms would form in the Atlantic, with as many as nine strengthening into hurricanes and as many as five becoming Category 5 storms, which are the most powerful. The agency revised the outlook slightly in August, predicting that the season would see 13 to 18 named storms, including five to nine hurricanes, two of which could be major.
Of the six named tropical storms that have developed this year before Gabrielle, only one, Chantal, made landfall in the U.S.