Tropical Storm Katia, latest of 2011 hurricane season

MIAMI, (Reuters) – Tropical Storm Katia formed over  the open Atlantic Ocean today, becoming the 11th named  storm of the 2011 hurricane season, U.S. forecasters said.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Katia was about 535  miles (855 km) southwest of the southernmost Cape Verde Islands  and was moving quickly west northwestward across the Atlantic.
It was too soon to gauge the storm’s potential threat to  the U.S. East Coast or energy interests in the Gulf of Mexico  with any confidence.
But Katia was packing top sustained winds of about 40 miles  (65 km) per hour and was forecast to become a powerful Category  2 hurricane by the weekend, the Miami-based hurricane center  said.
Katia was the second named storm to form since Hurricane  Irene, the first hurricane of the 2011 Atlantic season, swirled  up the U.S. East Coast over the weekend.
The peak period of the June-November season still has many  weeks to run.