Hurricane Lorenzo is heading towards the Azores and is expected to bring damaging winds, heavy rain and large waves to the Portuguese islands. But where will Lorenzo go then and could its remnants impact the UK? Aidan McGivern take a look.
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00:00This is Hurricane Lorenzo, previously a Category 5 hurricane. In fact, it was the easternmost
00:06Category 5 hurricane on record for the Atlantic. Now, a Category 2 hurricane, Lorenzo, is heading
00:13towards the Azores. But you may have heard reports that Lorenzo will impact the UK later
00:19this week. There is currently a lot of uncertainty about that, so let's take a look at what's
00:23going on. Here are the Azores, a group of Portuguese islands in the Atlantic, and it's
00:29by the middle of the week that Lorenzo is likely to bring the threat of hurricane-force
00:33winds, heavy rainfall and large sea waves. But it's after Hurricane Lorenzo moves through
00:39the Azores that things become very uncertain. And that's because Lorenzo moves away from
00:46very warm Atlantic sea surface temperatures, shown here by red. This is currently providing
00:51the fuel for Lorenzo. However, as Lorenzo moves away from that fuel source, it starts
00:58to decay. It's at this point that we need another source of fuel for Lorenzo, and that
01:04comes in the form of the jet stream. And the uncertainties around Lorenzo come in terms
01:10of how quickly Lorenzo will be picked up by the jet stream and sent towards northern parts
01:16of Europe. And it's at this point that computer models start to diverge. Some computer models
01:23send Lorenzo on a track that pushes it way past the UK very quickly as a deep area of
01:31low pressure towards southern parts of Greenland. Other computer models send Lorenzo as a decaying
01:38area of low pressure into southern Ireland and then southern parts of Britain. But what
01:43we consider the most likely track for Lorenzo at the moment, as an ex-hurricane, is to move
01:50to the northwest of the UK as a typical area of low pressure for the time of year. Now
01:58let's see what that looks like. We're expecting Lorenzo to start to impact the UK through
02:03Thursday and into Friday, and this is the expected position to the northwest of the
02:08UK if Lorenzo moves along this scenario. But because the scenarios are diverging so much
02:16at the moment, there is a lot of uncertainty. And it looks likely that Lorenzo, or at least
02:21the remnants of Hurricane Lorenzo, will bring strong winds, risk of gales and some heavy
02:27rainfall to the UK by Thursday into Friday. A lot of uncertainty at the moment. Because
02:33of these different scenarios, it is certainly worth paying close attention to the weather
02:37forecast over the next couple of days as we firm up on the details.