Europe on alert as Hurricane Gordon approaches
Pastor Dale Morgan
Europe on alert as Hurricane Gordon approaches*
MADRID, Sept 20 (AFP) Sep 20, 2006
Twelve Spanish regions were on alert Wednesday as Hurricane Gordon
approached northwest Spain where it was expected to hit the coast early
evening with 110 kilometre (68 miles) per hour winds, the Civil
Protection Directorate General said.
Although Hurricane Gordon was downgraded to an extra-tropical storm
Wednesday as it closed in on the Azores archipelago in the mid-Atlantic,
the winds could still do damage, authorities in the Portuguese territory
warned.
And in Ireland the tail end of the storm threatened to delay Friday's
start to the 36th Ryder Cup golf match between Europe and the United States.
The winds were expected to reach gusts of between 90 to 110 kilometres
per hour in the northern regions of Spain, weakening to 80 kilometres
per hour in the central regions which include the capital, Madrid, a
civil protection official said.
"This is an extraordinary phenomenon which can have dangerous
repercussions," said a government spokesman for Galicia in northwest
Spain which lies directly in the path of the hurricane and where the
local government had ordered schools to stay closed on Thursday.
The storm was earlier downgraded to a Category 1 hurricane as it passed
just south of Flores and Corvo, the two westernmost islands in the
nine-island Azores archipelago which is home to some 240,000 people.
A Category 1 storm on the five-step Saffir Simpson scale of hurricane
intensity causes damage primarily to unanchored mobile homes, trees and
piers as well as flooding in coastal and low-lying areas.
Gordon had initially been expected to hit the Azores, located about
1,200 kilometres (750 miles) west of mainland Portugal, as a Category 2
hurricane but it lost strength as it moved over colder waters towards
the islands.
Major hurricanes are those at Category 3 and higher.
Portuguese civil authorities changed the alert level from red to orange,
and said that only two of the islands -- especially Sao Miguel -- were
still on a state of alert, as opposed to five on Tuesday.
They ordered schools to be shut and fishermen to stay on land on
Wednesday, and boosted the number of emergency personnel on call.
The tail end of Hurricane Gordon was also causing concern in Ireland
where organisers of the 36th Ryder Cup temporarily closed the K Club course.
Winds gusting at up to 64 kph in the early morning had forced organisers
to check all the temporary installations on the course, causing a
three-hour delay before thousands of spectators who had been queueing
since before dawn were allowed on to the course.
With the course already soaked by torrential rain on Monday and the wild
weather expected to continue, the terrain could be left too saturated
for the match to start on schedule on Friday morning.
The last time the Ryder Cup was interrupted by bad weather was at
Valderrama, Spain in 1987, when a deluge delayed the start. The event
finished on time on the Sunday however.