The weather in Ireland will be more difficult to predict in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton, which is due to hit the Gulf Coast of Florida later on Wednesday or Thursday.
The Category 5 hurricane, which is currently forecast to make landfall as a Category 4 storm, will potentially be one of the most destructive to hit the area.
Landfall is expected along the west-central coast of Florida late tonight or early Thursday morning, with the storm progressing to move off the east Florida coast on Thursday afternoon. The storm is currently moving northeast at 22km/h, and outer bands have already begun impacting Florida.
There will not be any direct impact from the tail end of the storm in Ireland, but it will “indirectly impact us as it moves away from Florida,” a senior meteorologist at Met Éireann, Jennifer Foran, told The Irish Times.
“As it moves away from Florida, it’ll lose its energy and no longer have hurricane status. Once it’s over the Atlantic, it will be less powerful, but it will interact with the jet stream, and that will make our forecast become more uncertain,” she said.
It means it is “not as easy to say with as much certainty what weather we’ll get over the next few days”.
Currently, the forecast is “generally cold, dry and bright, with a few showers” across the country, and it will be “more unsettled from next week”.
Hurricane Milton is on a collision course for the Tampa Bay metropolitan area this week, home to more than three million people, though forecasters said the path could vary before the storm makes landfall late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning.
The storm is on a rare west-to-east path through the Gulf of Mexico and is likely to bring a deadly storm surge of 3m (10ft) or more to much of Florida’s Gulf Coast.
More than one million people in coastal areas are under evacuation orders.
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