 The first tropical cyclone and hurricane of the 1861 season is believed to have formed on July 6, immediately east of the Leeward Islands.A 1938 publication documented the storm's effects on Guadeloupe and St. Kitts, and given a lack of prior reports on the cyclone, modern-day reassessments concluded that it was relatively weak when it affected those islands.After crossing the northern Leeward Islands, the tropical storm broadly curved toward the northwest, likely intensifying into the equivalence of a Category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale on July 9.