Hurricane Leslie is highly likely to hit Madeira late on Saturday but will have been downgraded to a ‘tropical storm,’ according to the Portuguese IPMA weather service.
This severe weather system has been hard hard to pin down, with different modelling programme offering different scenarios and the fact that the storm itself has been behaving erratically, meandering around the ocean since September 23rd.
Throughout Thursday, October 11th, Leslie stayed well away from mainland or island areas, feeding on the warm water and moisture over the Atlantic.
Leslie already has been pushed about by various weather systems in the North Atlantic but has not had a strong enough shove to push it towards land.
The IPMA meteorologists and the National Hurricane Center in the US continue to track Leslie across the North Atlantic and agree that it will reach the Madeira archipelago as a tropical storm on Saturday.
The IPMA is preparing to give advice to locals about the storm but is waiting for more precise data in order to be certain about the rain, wind and wave height forecasts.
The tropical storm has been stationary in the mid-Atlantic for weeks but on Wednesday it began to move, increasing in strength and hitting Level 1 Hurricane Force.
Early modelling showed the system passing north of the Azores which would decrease in violence before reaching Madeira and then moving south to the Canaries, or heading north towards the Algarve.
After Madeira, "Leslie is forecast to remain a hurricane or tropical storm into this weekend as it approaches the Canary Islands and the northwest coast of Africa," according to AccuWeather Hurricane Expert Dan Kottlowski.
"However, once it reaches waters near the northwest coast of Africa, strong winds aloft are likely to begin to tear at and shred the storm, which will cause it to weaken," Kottlowski said.
It is possible that Leslie will die out by the middle of next week but there is always a chance that Leslie survives the hostile weather zone and may drift westward, back toward the central Atlantic later next week.
From the current modelling, Leslie will continue to veer east and will miss the Algarve but remain a threat to Madeira and later, to the Canaries.
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