Ophelia may become Ireland’s strongest storm

Bloomberg

Category 2 Hurricane Ophelia is threatening everything from farms to a golf course owned by the family of US President Donald Trump as it heads for Ireland.
Ophelia’s top winds were 155 kilometres an hour by 3.40 pm London time, reaching the second level of the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale. The storm, about 545 miles southwest of the Azores, is forecast to stay a powerful cyclone over the next few days, and may scrape the west coast of Ireland on Monday before dissipating over Scandinavia, the US National Hurricane Center said in an advisory.
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. 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 spokesman said.
“At the moment, in one model the actual center in Ophelia is basically supposed to rub the west coast of Ireland,” said David Reynolds, senior meteorologist at The Weather Co. In Birmingham, England. “It’s really touch and go.”
Ophelia could become the strongest post-tropical system to rake Ireland since Hurricane Debbie in 1961, which killed 18 people and stripped almost 25 percent of the trees in some areas, according to Weather Underground.
The Irish government is monitoring the situation, a spokesman said in an emailed statement.
Ophelia will 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. The storm 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 UK, as well as tens of millions in France, Spain and Portugal, according to Chuck Watson, a disaster modeler at Enki Research in Savannah, Georgia. Using European forecasts, those numbers could be cut in half.
“My subjective guesstimate is more like $600 million in Ireland and under $100 million for the UK,” Watson said. Debbie’s damages would’ve reached $338 million in today’s dollars.
Ireland’s Met Eireann weather office and the Met Office in the UK issued yellow warnings for Monday, meaning residents need to be aware of encroaching risks.