Met Éireann is tracking a violent category 5 hurricane which could make landfall in Ireland on Thursday.
Hurricane Lorenzo is the most northerly and easterly hurricane that has ever been recorded in the Atlantic and is currently equidistant between the Caribbean islands and Africa.
A hurricane of similar wind speeds, Hurricane Dorian, devastated the Bahamas earlier this month.
Hurricane Lorenzo is currently moving north at 16km/h and is centred about 2,300 kilometres southwest of the Azores.
The Portuguese-owned Azores islands in the middle of the Atlantic are on lockdown with the storm expected to hit the islands on Tuesday night with wind speeds of more than 150 km/h.
Met Éireann staged a conference call with the National Hurricane Centre in the United States on Sunday and will do so on a daily basis until Thursday.
Met Éireann forecaster Jean Byrne said Hurricane Lorenzo has the potential of bringing gale-force winds to Ireland on Thursday into Thursday night though it will have lost a lot of its energy by then.
She stressed there were “huge discrepancies” in the computer models with some models showing the remnants of the hurricane tracking due north and west of Ireland while others have Ireland and Britain directly in the path of Lorenzo.
The European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) shows the range of the hurricane remnants tracking as far east as Ireland and as far west as the coasts off Greenland.
Ms Byrne said the paths of these hurricanes are often uncertain and its track will not be apparent until Wednesday.
She explained: “If it tracked close enough to Ireland, it could bring very strong winds. It will depend on the track. Because these things are so powerful, they are also chaotic.
“Sometimes you still have a lot of uncertainty close to the event. We should have a better idea Monday or Tuesday. Some of the models are showing severe winds across Ireland, but there are a lot of possible scenarios. We have to watch out for it because of its origins and its track.”
