Ophelia may hit Ireland with powerful winds

Ophelia strengthened into a Category 2 hurricane forecast is will likely strike the island of Ireland.

The storm could be one of the country’s strongest storms in half a century. It threatens everything from farms to a golf course owned by the family of U.S. President Donald Trump.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Friday that Ophelia is still far out at sea and no threat to land, some 770 kilometres southwest of the Azores. But the storm’s five-day forecast, which can change, shows a post-tropical Ophelia nearing the British Isles by Monday.

On Friday afternoon, the storm had maximum sustained winds of 155 km/h and was moving to the east-northeast at 20 km/h. The Miami-based hurricane centre says the British Isles, including Ireland, should be watching the storm’s progress.

After hurricane Irma closed Trump’s Mar-a-Lago in Florida last month, Ophelia could make landfall close to the Trump family’s golf resort near the village of Doonbeg in the southwest of the island. The resort, which has said it can lose as much as 10 metres of land to coastal erosion during a bad storm, is along the route expected to be hit by Ophelia’s gale force winds. Trump International Golf Links & Hotel is constantly reviewing the situation, a spokesperson said by email.

Ophelia could become the strongest post-tropical system to rake the island since hurricane Debbie in 1961, which killed 18 people and stripped almost 25 per cent of the trees in some areas, according to Weather Underground. Sixty people died in a plane crash in the Azores caused by Debbie.

The storm would move across the country very quickly and may bring heavy rain if it makes landfall, Gerald Fleming, head of forecasting at the Irish weather service, said on RTE radio Friday. Ophelia could pummel the Cork and Kerry coast but it’s still three or four days away.

Using the current forecast track from the National Hurricane Center, damages could reach $800 million in Ireland and $300 million in the U.K., as well as tens of millions in France, Spain and Portugal, according to Chuck Watson, a disaster modeller at Enki Research in Savannah, Georgia. Using European forecasts produces lower figures.

Ireland’s Met Eireann weather office and the Met Office in the U.K. issued yellow warnings for Monday, meaning residents need to be aware of encroaching risks.

“Power cuts may occur, with the potential to affect other services, such as mobile phone coverage,” the Met Office said in its warning. “Some damage to buildings, such as tiles blown from roofs could happen, perhaps leading to injuries and danger to life from flying debris.”

It’s unusual for a hurricane to head toward northwest Europe. The Atlantic hurricane season, usually a bigger threat to the U.S., Mexico and Caribbean, has produced 15 named storms, — the most since the late 19th century. The storms have killed hundreds and caused $300 billion in damage across the U.S. and the Caribbean.