Former hurricane Ophelia slammed into Ireland’s western coast Monday, bringing wind gusts as high as 90 miles per hour and heavy rainfall.
Already, two casualties have been reported, and Ophelia is stripping rooftops off buildings and ripping trees out of the ground. About 230,000 people lost their electricity once the storm hit, according to local news reports.
Ophelia could be the strongest storm to hit Ireland in 50 years. The storm reached Category 3 strength farther east than any other Atlantic Ocean storm on record.
Ophelia is indeed a rare sight, especially that far north and east in the Atlantic. So how did the storm take off?
Tropical storms feed off warm water usually found in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. Ophelia, on the other hand, formed more northward where hurricanes generally lose steam.
“In terms of how Ophelia was able to get so strong, it was a combination of lower than normal wind shear, warmer than normal sea surface temperatures and colder than normal upper-level temperatures which made the atmosphere more unstable than normal,” Phil Klotzbach, a meteorologist and tropical storm expert at Colorado State University, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
Ophelia developed in an area of low wind shear, and cold air temperatures in the upper atmosphere interacted with warmer-than-normal ocean waters. The temperature difference between the sea surface and upper atmosphere fueled the instability of lightning storms in Ophelia’s core.
“It also interacted with some favorable mid-latitude jet stream dynamics to maintain Ophelia as a major hurricane and then a potent post-tropical cyclone,” Klotzbach said.
Ophelia strengthened into a tropical storm on Oct. 9, becoming the 15th named storm of the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season. Ophelia became a hurricane two days later with 65-mile-per-hour winds as it tracked northwest towards the Azores.
On Oct. 14, Hurricane Ophelia strengthened to a Category 2 storm, then to a Category 3 not long after, according to the National Hurricane Center. Ophelia packed sustained winds of 114 miles per hour just before it passed over the Azores.
“Ophelia weakened on Sunday night and is now no longer classified as a hurricane,” Met Office Chief Forecaster Paul Gundersen said in a statement Monday.
“That said, storm force to hurricane force winds of up to 80mph across Northern Ireland, and some areas bordering the Irish Sea will result in travel disruption, power cuts and some damage to buildings such as tiles being blown from roofs,” Gundersen said.
Experts say Ophelia could cause nearly $2 billion in damage. The most powerful September storm to hit Ireland on record, Hurricane Debbie in 1961, did $900 million worth of damage, taking inflation into account.
Debbie brought hurricane force winds to Ireland. Wind gusts reached as high as 114 miles per hour, literally ripping trees out of the ground. Some areas of Ireland lost about one-quarter of their trees.
Debbie killed 18 people in Ireland, and caused another 60 people to die in a place crash in the Azores.
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