Tropical storm Ophelia strengthened into a hurricane in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean Wednesday to become the 10th hurricane of the season, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

The center said in an advisory Wednesday afternoon that Ophelia gained hurricane status as its top sustained winds reached 75 mph (120 kph).

The storm tied a record for the most consecutive storms to reach hurricane force, meteorologist Philip Klotzbach of Colorado State University said.

The last time so many named storms in a row became hurricanes was in 1893, he said.

The storm had winds of 120 kilometers an hour and was located some 1,200 kilometers south-west of the Azores, where it posed no immediate danger to land, the hurricane center said.

There are no coastal watches or warnings in effect.

The hurricane season has seen a series of strong, destructive storms that have wreaked havoc across the Caribbean as well as in the US states of Texas and Florida.