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Hurricane Leslie on its way towards west-southwest Europe this week

The now Tropical Storm Leslie remains a well-organized tropical system and is expected to become a hurricane again in two days. Leslie will then head towards Madeira island or midway between Azores and Canary islands before nearing west-southwest Europe this weekend. Potential exists for possible landfall in Portugal or even Ireland per global models, trends are being monitored.

The future path of Leslie leads it towards southeast through the next 3 days, then it turns east-northeast and heads towards Azores and Madeira island later this week. The arrival time to the islands would be late Thursday or Friday morning.

However, Leslie’s future track is still quite uncertain based on global models: here is an example of the latest GFS model runs where Leslie could affect Madeira / Canary islands, Portugal or Ireland. Still wide open options for its track towards west-southwest Europe late this week.

Model intensity guidance suggests Leslie will be maintaining at least Tropical storm strength through its whole lifetime until landfall, it is quite possible it will become a hurricane on Wednesday and continue as a strong system towards Europe.

Leslie will be moving across better / warmer sea waters in the next days so intensification back to a hurricane strength is likely by Wednesday, before it begins accelerating towards northeast.

A comparison of today’s, October 8th 00 UTC model runs by ECMWF and GFS: An European ECMWF model pushes Leslie towards Iberian peninsula this weekend with landfall in south Portugal on Sonday. On the other side, the American GFS model puts Leslie west of Iberia towards northeast where it indicated its landfall in Ireland on Sunday.

The overall trend of Leslie tracks it towards west-southwest Europe, but too many uncertainties still exist to have a precise future track. We are monitoring these trends and pattern across Europe and will keep you updated through the next days – stay tuned!