Short answer: The UK doesn’t get hurricanes because the surrounding sea surface temperatures are too cool to sustain tropical cyclones, and because even storms that originate farther south typically weaken as they move into cooler waters and/or transition to extratropical systems before reaching British shores. They can bring strong winds and heavy rain as remnants, but they don’t exist as full-strength hurricanes over UK waters. Details
- Why hurricanes don’t form near the UK
- Hurricanes require very warm sea surface temperatures (around 26–27°C or higher) to fuel the storm. The waters around the British Isles are cooler than that for most of the year, which prevents tropical cyclones from forming or maintaining their structure there.
* Even when Atlantic hurricanes travel north toward Europe, they typically encounter cooler waters that weaken them and cause them to lose their tropical characteristics, a process known as extratropical transition. By the time such storms reach the UK, they are usually transitioning into powerful extra-tropical cyclones or remnants with broad impacts like heavy rain and strong winds rather than hurricane-strength winds.
- How UK impacts occur
- The UK can experience the remnants of tropical systems that have traveled across the Atlantic. These remnants may still carry a lot of moisture and can produce heavy rains, gusty winds, and flooding potential even though the core remains non-tropical.
* Notable historical events associated with ex-hurricane remnants or strong extratropical cyclones include damaging wind storms and intense rain events that originated from earlier tropical systems but weakened before landfall.
- Common misconceptions
- Headlines about “hurricanes hitting the UK” are usually referring to post-tropical remnants or extratropical storms, not actual hurricanes. The scientific consensus is that the combination of cooler sea surface temperatures and regional atmospheric dynamics makes true hurricanes impractical near the British Isles.
If you’d like, I can tailor a short explainer for a specific event (like remnants of a named Atlantic hurricane) or pull up a concise comparison of tropical cyclone requirements versus European storm behavior.
