Tiny TS Marco (10/7)

Tropical storm Marco formed during the beginning of October 2008 and struck Mexico's Bay of Campeche coast as a 65-70 MPH tropcial storm. This storm, however, was very unique because it was the smallest tropical cyclone ever observed, with a tropical-storm forced wind field width of only 10-15 miles - A large thunderstorm complex is larger!



The annotated to-scale diagram above compares the size of hurricane "Ike" (in September 2008) with that of Tropical storm "Marco", less than a month later, which is barely discernable in the Bay of Campeche to the lower-left (look carefully)! The previous record for the smallest size of a tropical storm's gale envelope was with tropical cyclone "Tracy", with a 30-mile wide wind-field, back in Australia in the early 1970's.

For the records, the widest tropical cyclone (measured across the wind swath of winds at or greater than 38-MPH) was super typhoon "Tip" in the Pacific back in 1979, at an astonishing 1,200 miles across!