 Upon attaining hurricane @-@ status , Arlene rapidly tracked northward due to a strengthening area of high pressure near the Azores . Shortly after , the storm attained its peak intensity with winds of 75 mph ( 121 km / h ) and a barometric pressure of 987 mbar ( hPa ) . Continuing rapidly northward , the hurricane began to interact with a baroclinic zone over the cold waters of the north Atlantic . This resulted in the storm undergoing an extratropical transition which it completed by 0000 UTC on August 24 . The extratropical remnants of the storm continued to track around the periphery of the high pressure system , turning towards the southeast the following day . By August 26 , the storm became increasingly disorganized and hard to pinpoint on satellite imagery . The storm finally dissipated at 1800 UTC off the coast of Portugal that day . 
