The 1951 Atlantic hurricane season was the first hurricane season in which tropical cyclones were officially named by the United States Weather Bureau. The season officially started on June 15, when the United States Weather Bureau began its daily monitoring for tropical cyclone activity; the season officially ended on November 15. It was the first year since 1937 in which no hurricanes made landfall on the United States; as Hurricane How was the only tropical storm to hit the nation, the season had the least tropical cyclone damage in the United States since the 1939 season. As in the 1950 season, names from the Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet were used to name storms this season. The first hurricane of the season, Able, formed prior to the official start of the season; before reanalysis in 2015, it was once listed as the earliest major hurricane on record in the Atlantic basin. It formed on May 16 and executed a counterclockwise loop over the Bahamas; later it brushed the North Carolina coastline. Hurricane Charlie was a powerful Category 4 hurricane that struck Jamaica as a major hurricane, killing hundreds and becoming the worst disaster in over 50 years. The hurricane later struck Mexico twice as a major hurricane, producing deadly flooding outside of Tampico, Tamaulipas. The strongest hurricane, Easy, spent its duration over the open Atlantic Ocean, briefly threatening Bermuda, and was formerly listed as one of a relatively few Category 5 hurricanes on record over the Atlantic Ocean. It briefly neared Category 5 status and interacted with Hurricane Fox, marking the first known instance of a hurricane affecting another's path. Timeline Systems Tropical Storm One As the calendar entered the new year, cyclogenesis occurred with an extratropical frontal wave over the western North Atlantic Ocean due to a closed low forming in a mid-level trough, which eventually produced a low-pressure center at the surface by January 2. Ships recorded moderate gales up to in connection with the new surface low, which formed several hundred miles east-southeast of Bermuda. While initially lacking tropical attributes, the cyclone headed southeast for two days before curving southwestward. As it did so, the temperature of the system warmed in its lower levels, causing the cyclone to evolve into a more barotropic system. Late on January 4, the system shrank in size and began developing an inner core; reanalysis determined that the system became a tropical storm