After the powerful storm, once known as Hurricane Lee, traveled 3,000 miles (5,000 kilometers) across the Atlantic Ocean toward New England and Canada, where it made landfall Saturday, the storm’s remnants have one more journey to make: to the coasts of Britain and Ireland.
The storm system will help usher in traditional autumn weather across Britain this week, with cool, windy rainfall on Tuesday and Wednesday.
According to the Met Office, Britain’s national weather service, the rains will be heaviest and most persistent in parts of Wales and north-west England. Some flooding is possible in these areas.
The rain will fall in areas used to wet weather, said Alex Deakin, a Met Office meteorologist, but because tropical air is mixed into this storm it will be moister than normal. “It’s more heavily loaded and so it gets more rain than a typical low-pressure system,” he said.
Mr Deakin said the storm followed an “unprecedented” heatwave in Britain, where temperatures were above 86 degrees Fahrenheit, or 30 degrees Celsius, for seven consecutive days ending on September 10. It was quite a change,” he says.
It is not unusual for a storm to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
The Atlantic Ocean-dominated weather pattern is not unheard of in Britain and Ireland.
In October 2017, the remnants of Hurricane Ophelia swept across Britain and Ireland, where three people were killed by falling trees.
An October 1987 weather event known as the ‘Great Storm’ brought hurricane force winds to parts of Britain, with some gusts up to 100 miles per hour. Eighteen people died in the storm, according to the Met Office. Thousands of homes were without power for more than 24 hours and about 15 million trees were felled.
In mid-latitudes, storm systems generally move eastward, in an area known as the westerlies. A hurricane will form in the tropics, where the water is warm enough to provide energy to a tropical system and where the currents are predominantly westward. When a hurricane turns north, it will inevitably end up west. This means it will sail east towards Europe.
However, when a storm like Lee moves over the colder waters of the North Atlantic Ocean, it no longer has the fuel it needs from the ocean. For the storm to maintain strength, it must transition into a typical weather system, which draws its energy from colliding cold air masses and warm air masses. Sometimes these storms are strong enough to sustain hurricane force winds, as Lee did when he made landfall in Canada last weekend. The storm has since weakened and as it leaves Canada behind on Monday, it will speed up and approach Ireland and Britain on Tuesday.
Lee isn’t the only storm that could have a dominating effect on the weather in Ireland and Britain this week. Hurricane Nigel, which is in the central Atlantic Ocean, appears to have a track that will bring it close later this week.
The Met Office’s Mr Deakin said Nigel was “still quite lively and could give us another wet, windy spell this weekend.”