Looks like one to me...

I first heard about this late last night on the local TV weather report (the teaser: "Is this evidence of global warming?")

With winds of up to 150 kph (94 mph), the storm appeared to be the first hurricane on record in the South Atlantic. The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami estimated the storm was a full-fledged, Category 1 hurricane with central winds of at least 119 kph (74 mph). Private U.S. forecasting company AccuWeather* said the storm was a hurricane.

[source: AP, via CNN]

“The Americans, who are used to follow tropical hurricanes in the North Atlantic region, take a peek at the satellite image and think this is a hurricane. If they paid a little more attention to the details, they would see that we have a different structure here. In a hurricane, winds in the lower levels turn in one direction, but spin in the opposite direction in the upper levels. Here, they turn equally from the surface to the upper levels.”

On Sunday, the official position had changed a little. Laura Rodrigues, from Santa Catarina’s Meteorology Center admitted that the weather phenomenon had shown “characteristics different from those we are used to” and announced that her and her colleagues were trying to decide if Brazil was hit by a cyclone or a hurricane. “The episode has characteristics of a hurricane,” she said, “but it is still too early to decide with certainty.”

Finally on Monday afternoon, Brazilian weather experts admitted that the winds that hit the Brazilian coast were above hurricane strength. Winds were as high as 94 miles per hour.

[source: Brazzil.com]

* "We think the Brazilians are, quite frankly, out to lunch on this one," Michael Sager, an AccuWeather meteorologist said on Saturday. "I think they're trying to play it down and not cause a panic. I don't know what they're doing, but they're obviously wrong."

All sides said they were basing their estimates on satellite data, since the United States has no hurricane hunter airplanes in the area and Brazil doesn't own any.

Sager said the storm had a clear, well-defined eye and that it had lasted for more than 36 hours. Storms that are not hurricane-strength sometimes form strong eyes, but not for that long, he said.

[source: an earlier AP report, also via CNN]