(Bloomberg) After a three-week journey around the Atlantic Ocean, Leslie was on track to make landfall at Portugal’s coast late Saturday with hurricane-force winds — only the third time in 176 years that a storm this powerful has made it to the Iberian Peninsula. Storm warnings cover Portugal, according to the Portuguese Institute for Sea and Atmosphere. Leslie’s sustained winds fell to 75 miles an hour, the minimum to qualify as a hurricane,

at midday Saturday as it raced toward the coast at more than 30 mph. The storm was about 315 kilometers (195 miles) west-southwest of Lisbon at 4 p.m. local time. Leslie is forecast to be a powerful post-tropical cyclone by the time it reaches the Iberian peninsula. After landfall, rapid weakening is anticipated, and Leslie is forecast to degenerate into a broad low-pressure area over Spain in a day or so. The storm could cause $4 billion to $5 billion in economic impacts as it crosses the peninsula, according to Chuck Watson, a disaster modeler with Enki Research. READ MORE


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