Vince was the 12th named hurricane of a very busy season that spawned hurricanes Rita and Katrina. Vince formed over part of the Atlantic ocean that was cooler than 24 °C (75 °F), compared to the temperature of  26.5 °C (80 °F) usually required for the development of a tropical storm.

It became a storm near the coast of Madeira on October 9th and was named 'Vince' soon after.  The storm's eye quickly formed into the typical eye of a hurricane and measured 15 miles in diameter. Vince then made slow progress towards the Iberian peninsular on a gentle north eastwards track. As it ventured into ever cooler waters this system began to lose its strength before making landfall at Huelva in Spain on October 11th.

Once over land the storm dropped no more than 86 millimetres of rain and had wind speeds of around 35-40 mph. For those of you used to the huge hurricanes that crash through the Gulf of Mexico every year you must be wondering what all the fuss is about. It isn't the strength of the storm that's important here, it's the area of location, formation and track that make it such an interesting and unusual storm (for meteorologists that is!).

In fact the statistics for Vince over Spain make dismal reading. Rainfall was 50mm at Gibraltar, 33mm in Malaga, 3mm in Almeria and nothing more than a slight dampening of the ground around Murcia. These parts of Spain were stricken with drought at the time, so the rainfall towards the west was very welcome.

The air pressure of Hurricane Vince over Spain was 1002 mb and rising but an upper trough travelling south east across Portugal and Spain gave the storm an extra boost, and led to the higher rainfall totals in Gibraltar and Malaga. The highest precipitation of all was found at Cordoba in southern Spain, where an extremely large cumulonimbus cloud formed within the storm and deposited 86 mm of rain.

These rains from the weakening remnants of Vince brought welcome relief to local inhabitants who had suffered a record breaking drought and large forest fires. The reservoirs and aquifers were partially refilled. Although there was some flooding, more especially around Cordoba, there were no fatalities reported for the duration of the storm.

Although Vince formed in an unusual location, it is not the most northerly or most easterly forming hurricane ever recorded. These distinctions go to tropical storm Alberto (1988) and tropical storm Ginger (1967) respectively. So Vince was unspectacular, lacked any real punch and dissipated as quickly as it formed, yet it will always be remembered as the first tropical cyclone to make landfall in Europe. And that is what makes it, to people like myself, so interesting!