Updated 11.14pm
MET ÉIREANN SAYS the tropical weather system currently circulating between Bermuda and South Carolina, will miss Ireland off the south coast this weekend, but that “it is being monitored.”
It had been feared that Hurricane Bertha, as it’s known, might sweep across the Atlantic Ocean in the coming days, and bring severe storms to Ireland.
Speaking to TheJournal.ie today, however, Met Éireann forecaster David Rogers explained that, as the weather system moves away from the tropics over the next 24-36 hours, it will “lose its tropical characteristics” and technically no longer be a hurricane.
As it moves north-east into the Atlantic, there is more and more uncertainty about how it might interact with normal mid-latitude variability.
What this means is that the weather system that is now Hurricane Bertha will be something different by the time it reaches the coast of Newfoundland, off Canada, which Rogers says will happen by early Friday morning.
Once they lose tropical characteristics, weather systems which were once hurricanes can become storms, but not hurricanes, per se, as Rogers explains.
There is no chance of redeveloping into a hurricane, because sea surface temperatures are too low in this part of the Atlantic.
“After that it could develop into a mid-latitude storm”, says Rogers, but according to this chart from the National Hurricane Center in the US, whatever it is by this weekend, it will just miss Ireland off the south coast.
On current projections, the risk to Ireland is low at this stage. But it is being monitored.
Although these possible storms are unlikely to impact Ireland, the southern coast of the United Kingdom, by contrast, could be in harm’s way, according to Rogers.
Originally published 6.14pm
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