Hurricane Gordon strengthened as it bore down on Portugal’s Azores Islands on Tuesday and emergency services in the mid-Atlantic islands went on alert.
Gordon bore winds of 160kph at 8am EDT (12am GMT), making it a category two-storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, and was expected to maintain hurricane strength as it tore through the islands, the United States National Hurricane Centre said.
Hurricane warnings were in effect for all of the Azores, an archipelago of nine islands.
The centre of the hurricane was around 845km west of Terceira and it was sprinting toward the islands at a brisk 44kph, the Miami-based hurricane centre said.
Gordon has been defying predictions that it would weaken over ever-cooler waters as it moved eastward.
”It’s not an extremely common event” for a hurricane to reach the Azores, said hurricane centre forecaster John Cangialosi. ”Then again it’s not very unusual.”
More unusual than Gordon’s ability to maintain its strength was the likelihood that it would remain a tropical cyclone as it swept over the Azores, rather than becoming an extra-tropical storm, Cangialosi said.
In the Azores, the fire and civil protection service told firemen to stay on alert. Authorities expected Gordon to hit the islands on Tuesday night.
The president of the civil protection service of the Azores, Antonio Cunha, urged the population to remain indoors, Lusa news agency reported.
The other hurricane in the Atlantic, Helene, meanwhile, bore maximum sustained winds of 185kph as it swirled over waters on a path that was expected to gradually curve to the north, taking it to the east of Bermuda.
By 5am (9am GMT), Helene, a large category-three hurricane and the fourth hurricane of the 2006 Atlantic storm season, was about 1 520km east-southeast of the British mid-Atlantic territory.
The six-month Atlantic hurricane season, which began on June 1, has so far produced eight storms, of which four reached hurricane strength. The long-term average is for 10 storms a year, of which six become hurricanes.
Forecasters had initially expected that 2006 would see above average hurricane activity after 2005’s record-breaking season, during which 28 storms spawned 15 hurricanes, and 2004, when four hurricanes plowed through Florida.
But forecasters say a number of weather factors have contributed to lower-than-expected hurricane activity, including Saharan dust over the Atlantic and the development of El Niño conditions in the eastern Pacific.
An unusual warming of Pacific waters, El Niño conditions suppress hurricane formation in the Atlantic by increasing the amount of wind shear, which is the difference in the velocity or the direction of winds at different altitudes. – Reuters