This year’s Atlantic hurricane season had been relatively quiet before Hurricane Gabrielle.
Gabrielle has continued to grow in strength this week, turning into a massive Category 4 storm in the central Atlantic.
The storm reached Bermuda on Sunday and impacted the US East Coast, from North Carolina northward to Canada’s Atlantic coast.
Forecasters said the swells were likely to cause ‘life-threatening surf and rip current conditions.’
After a sharp turn to the right Gabrielle is now heading back across the Atlantic towards the Azores.
And while it will weaken over cooler water, parts of Western Europe are expected to be affected by severe weather.
However, it looks like the UK will not be affected by extreme wet and windy weather caused by Gabrielle.
After some chilly nights it will start to get milder this week, as an area of high pressure is keeping the UK dry.
Chris Bulmer, Deputy Chief Meteorologist at the Met Office, said that Gabrielle might have a ‘small influence’ on UK weather this weekend, as it ‘could affect the behaviour of a band of rain moving across the country’.
He said: ‘Hurricane Gabrielle is expected to track close to the Azores later on Thursday and into Friday, before weakening substantially as it approaches mainland Europe.
‘While there remains some uncertainty regarding its exact track over the weekend, it is very likely to stay well to the south of the UK.
‘Gabrielle’s evolution might have a small influence on UK weather this weekend, as it could affect the behaviour of a band of rain moving across the country.
‘If this occurs though, impacts will likely be minimal, as it would be a much weaker system than it currently is over the tropical Atlantic.’
In a post on X, formerly, on Tuesday afternoon, the Met Office said: ‘Hurricane Gabrielle will track across the Atlantic this week, becoming an ex-tropical system before reaching western Europe.
‘This system could influence the weather fronts we see going into the weekend, but the low itself is likely to fizzle out in the Bay of Biscay.’
So far, the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season has been surprisingly quiet and has significantly underperformed expert’s predictions.
Gabrielle has only been the seventh named storm of this hurricane season, which has less than three months to go this year.
To this point, only Tropical Storm Chantal made landfall in the US and the massive Category 5 Hurricane Erin was the only other storm to reach hurricane status before Gabrielle.
Gabrielle’s emergence broke a historic stretch of quiet weather in the Atlantic, which hadn’t been matched in 33 years.
Hurricane forecasters went 19 days between the end of Tropical Storm Fernand and naming Gabrielle.
The last time there were no named storms in the Atlantic for that long a stretch was 1992, when Americans were able to recover for 19 days after Hurricane Andrew devastated Florida.
