Hurricane Kirk — the 11th storm of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season — reached Category 4 intensity on October 3, according to the Fox Weather Center.
Hurricane Kirk is the strongest storm at this time (early October) of the Atlantic hurricane season since Hurricane Iota in 2020, said hurricane forecaster Philip Klotzbach of Colorado State University, USA.
Additionally, Kirk is the third Category 4 to 5 Atlantic hurricane so far this year, following Hurricane Beryl and Hurricane Helene.
In the satellite era since 1966, there have been six years with more than three Category 4 to 5 hurricanes in the Atlantic as of October 3: 1999, 2004, 2005, 2010, 2017, 2023.
Storm Kirk is expected to impact areas such as the UK and France, bringing heavy rain, rough seas and dangerous winds.
According to hurricane forecast models, Kirk's landfall is expected to occur next week as the storm loses heat from the warm Atlantic and becomes a tropical depression.
Fox Weather forecasters stress that Hurricane Kirk will not sweep across North America but will still have some impact on the weather here.
Hurricane Kirk began appearing in the central Atlantic on September 29 and quickly strengthened into a Category 3 hurricane a few days later.
According to the Fox Weather Hurricane Center, due to the direction of the subtropical low pressure band and a large low pressure trough, the path of Hurricane Kirk will not pass through areas such as Bermuda, the Bahamas and the United States.
However, due to the size of Hurricane Kirk, the storm's winds can affect a range of up to 320km. The US National Hurricane Center warns that large waves from the latest storm in the Atlantic could impact the US East Coast even though the storm is hundreds of kilometres away from North America.
According to Fox News' storm bulletin, the impact of Hurricane Kirk is expected to be limited to Europe as the storm has turned into a tropical depression.
Rainfall from the remnants of Storm Kirk could reach 130mm as the core of the system approaches Europe next week, according to forecast models.
Kirk's remnants could challenge some records set by previous systems that originated as hurricanes, hurricane and depression experts note.
Hurricane Ophelia in 2017 was considered one of the worst storms to affect the UK in decades, with many deaths and damage running into hundreds of millions of pounds.
