Hurricane Lee reached Category 3 status Wednesday morning, with sustained winds reaching 115 miles per hour, but the storm is not predicted to make landfall before it starts to weaken, the Weather Underground reported.
Lee is the fifth major storm the Atlantic Ocean has produced this year, but it is not expected to increase to a Category 4 or 5 like the other four – Harvey, Irma, Jose, and Maria. The hurricane, which is sitting in the North Atlantic Ocean some 500 miles east-southeast of Bermuda, is expected to start passing over cooler waters Thursday night, the Weather Underground noted.
The other four storms have left their signatures through this active hurricane season. Hurricane Harvey damaged thousands of homes and left record flooding along the Texas Gulf Coast, including the nation's fourth largest city in Houston in late August, The Weather Channel noted.
Hurricane Irma struck the Florida Keys and turned north to over the span of the state in early September, leaving 6.7 million people without electrical power initially, according to The Weather Channel.
Winds from Hurricane Jose reached 155 miles per hour in early September before passing north of the Leeward Islands and staying off the coast of the eastern United States, according to The Weather Channel. The storm eventually stalled south of the New England coast and became a post tropical cyclone Sept. 21.
Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico on Sept. 20, leaving most of the island without power and communication, NBC News reported. Eight days later, nearly half of the island's 3.4 million residents were without potable drinking water, the network reported.
Forecasters with the Weather Underground said a strong upper-level flow will push both Maria and Lee across the North Atlantic this weekend, with the remnants of both hurricanes possibly affecting the British Isles and northern Europe from Sunday into Tuesday.
"The remnants of tropical systems are likely to impact our weather towards the end of the weekend and into the beginning of next week," Steve Ramsdale, chief operational meteorologist with the United Kingdom's Met Office, said in a statement Wednesday. "However, it is important to say that any weather impacts will be very different from those experienced in the Caribbean."
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