The remnants of hurricane Ophelia are currently hitting southern Ireland with winds of 109mph, killing one woman in the city of Waterford. It’s the strongest storm to hit the country since 1961, when the remains of hurricane Debbie lashed the Republic of Ireland, killing 11 people.
“These storms are pretty rare,” says Catherine Muller at the Royal Meteorological Society. “It’s something that most people would experience only once or twice in their lifetime.”
But while a storm of this ferocity is relatively rare in Ireland, it’s not unprecedented for the British Isles to be hit by the dregs of a hurricane, says Len Shaffrey at the University of Reading in the UK. In 2006 Hurricane Gordon followed a similar path to Ophelia, hitting Spain, Ireland and the UK as an extratropical storm.
It’s also not uncommon for hurricanes to veer eastwards after they hit the Caribbean or United States, losing power and passing over Ireland as a loose weather front. In August this year hurricane Gert did exactly that, passing over Ireland after curving up the eastern United States as a category two storm.
Analysis by The Washington Post found that post-tropical storms – the name given to a weather system that used to be part of a tropical hurricane or storm – pass over or close to Ireland on a fairly frequent basis. The newspaper looked at records dating back to 1851 and found that 45 former tropical storms have passed either directly over or close to Ireland. That’s about one post-tropical storm every three-and-a-half years.
But ex-hurricane Ophelia is a unique storm for other reasons. The hurricane originated in the cooler waters of the North Atlantic before strengthening to category three status off Africa’s west coast. It has set the record for the most easterly category three hurricane in the Atlantic.
"What’s unusual about Ophelia is that it’s retained its hurricane structure and strength winds right as it approaches Ireland," says Len Shaffrey at the University of Reading in the UK.
This year’s hurricane season has been much more active than usual. The last time we had so many major hurricanes in the Atlantic was the 2005 season, which brought devastation to the US in the form of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Consistently high sea temperatures and favourable wind conditions have helped make the 2017 hurricane season particularly violent, but that doesn’t mean that we can put Ophelia down to climate change. "We don’t have enough observations from Ophelia-like storms to draw these conclusions," says Shaffrey.
"There’s a heck of a lot more research that needs to be done before we know if this is one effect of climate change."
Ex-hurricane Ophelia is set to weaken as it passes over Ireland and then Scotland throughout Monday and into the evening. In some places, up to four inches of rain are expected to fall. Schools across Ireland are shut and the government is warning against all unnecessary travel.
In the south of England, the high winds from ex-hurricane Ophelia kicked up sand and dust particles in the air, tingeing the sun with a red hue. There, the post-tropical storm has brought unusually high temperatures for mid-October.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
