When Tropical Storm Zeta formed at 0600 UTC on December 31, it became the second latest-forming tropical cyclone ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean, forming about six hours earlier than Hurricane Alice did in 1954. Zeta is only the second Atlantic tropical cyclone on record to have lived through two calendar years (after Alice). Tropical Storm Zeta also extended the record number of storms to form in the 2005 season to twenty-eight, seven more than the previous record held by a hurricane season from 1933. It was also the only Atlantic storm to have a name beginning with the letter "Z", since the list of names for Atlantic storms do not have a "Z" name.