Hurricane Oscar Will Finally Move Away And Dissipate

The Atlantic’s eighth hurricane of the 2018 season is set to finally move off to the north and away from the central Atlantic Ocean.

Oscar was rated as high as a Category 2 hurricane on Tuesday, but it had already started the process of weakening on Tuesday evening. Oscar is no direct threat to land, at least as a tropical system. It may pose a hazard to Europe as a non-tropical storm, though – we’ll have more on that shortly.

A ridge of high pressure that had kept Oscar sitting and spinning in the central Atlantic is breaking down, and a trough of low pressure is already beginning to steer Oscar away from its home of the last few days. Once Oscar moves north, it’ll quickly run into significantly cooler sea surface temperatures that will help to end the storm. The storm will accelerate as it moves northeast.

That said, parts of northern Europe could see a major wind and rain event from the remnants of Oscar as it moves there late this weekend and early next week. Iceland, Scotland and Norway could feel some of the impacts from Oscar’s remnants.

Oscar is the Atlantic basin’s 15th named storm of the season and eighth hurricane, with both numbers well above the full-season averages of roughly 11 tropical storms and six hurricanes.

Stay with WeatherNation for the latest on the tropics through the rest of the season.

For WeatherNation: Meteorologist Chris Bianchi