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Zombie storm Genevieve falls back down to tropical depression

Genevieve's long voyage across the Pacific Ocean. Global News

TORONTO – It’s the storm that wouldn’t die.

Genevieve, an on-again, off-again storm that has raged in the Pacific since the end of July, has finally had the wind taken out of its sails, being reduced to a tropical depression on Tuesday.

But Genevieve was one heck of a persistent storm.

READ MORE: Hurricane Julio weakens, will pass northeast of Hawaii

Genevieve was born as a tropical storm on July 25. But by July 27, the National Hurricane Center out of Miami, Florida, issued its final advisory, as Genevieve had become a remnant low with winds at just 55 km/h. It looked like it was dead.

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Wrong.

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By July 29, the storm had regained some of its earlier strength, reorganizing into a tropical depression. By Aug. 2, Genevieve was back as a tropical storm, but by the next day it was back down to a tropical depression.

But by Aug. 6 it was back as a hurricane. As it crossed the International Date Line it quickly intensified and became a Super Typhoon with winds of 259 km/h, hitting Category 5, the top of the Saffir-Simpson scale used to measure hurricane intensity.

NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image of Typhoon Genevieve on August 09, 2014. NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team

As Genevieve continued it eventually weakened into a tropical storm by Aug. 11 and finally a depression on Tuesday.

According to Dennis Feltgen from the National Hurricane Center, it’s unknown just how many kilometres Genevieve has travelled. The difficulty is that the storm crossed into three different hurricane basins, for which there are three different monitoring bodies. They will likely only know the distance by the end of the hurricane season.

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The question remains: Have we finally seen the last of Genevieve?

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