Bermuda “dodged a bullet” with Hurricane Imelda, which weakened overnight as it struck the island head-on.

Michelle Pitcher, of the Bermuda Weather Service, explained that while some exposed areas such as Commissioner’s House in Dockyard experienced sustained hurricane-force winds, the storm was losing strength when it passed the island.

She said: “It looks like overall we dodged a bullet.

“Imelda started to undergo its extratropical transition, which means transitioning from a Tropical Storm to a more typical extratropical low, as it was passing over us, which might have weakened its wind field and weakened the effects it had on us.

“In fact, as of noon we ended the tropical storm warning because the National Hurricane Centre has issued its last advisory on Hurricane Imelda, which is now a post-tropical cyclone officially.”

Ms Pitcher added that based on preliminary data, Imelda brought the island around 1.33 inches of rain, less than brought by the outer rings of Hurricane Humberto.

She said that the interaction between the two storms added an unusual wrinkle to their forecasting work.

Ms Pitcher said: “Humberto and Imelda were rather close to each other, so everybody was talking about the Fujiwhara effect, which is when two low pressures — hurricanes or just regular low pressure storms like we see in the wintertime — start to be attracted to each other.

“Sometimes they circle around each other and usually the stronger storm has more of an influence than the weaker storm, but they have a more complex interaction than we usually see.

“The other thing that was making this an interesting situation was that we had a stationary front off to our northwest which was accompanied by an upper-level trough.

“Once Humberto started to pass us, it interacted with the front and the trough and started to lose its tropical characteristics.

“At the same time, Imelda was starting to develop and strengthen, pulled [Humberto] a little bit closer to the west of Bermuda and more into the frontal boundary.”

Ms Pitcher said that as a meteorologist, it was fun to have “front row seats”, adding: “This is what we study, this is what we live for, to have these interesting and challenging situations.”

She said that the BWS and the NHC were in regular communication about the storms given the unusual nature of the situation.

“We had to discuss how we were going to manage our watches and warnings between Humberto and Imelda because Humberto was only going to bring us tropical storm conditions,” Ms Pitcher explained.

“As Imelda became stronger and its track became more and more certain, we had to discuss if we would transition normally or go from tropical storm watch to warning.

“We decided with the NHC to just go straight to hurricane watch and warning because Imelda was going to be the more significant storm and bring the most impact to the area.”