Very Rare Weather Experience, Two Landfalls on the Same Day

Very Rare Weather Experience, Two Landfalls on the Same Day

If you don’t know, tracking tropical storms can be a process because of the many variables that could shift a storm in various directions.  At the time of this post, there is a growing potential for some impact to take place to the Central Gulf Coast.

It is the peak of hurricane season, and we are having a very active time in the tropics.  Personally, I love tracking and monitoring hurricanes because of all the variables that can occur to change the projected path.  Right now, we could experience a very rare weather situation where we could have two landfalls on the same day.

How rare is this occurrence?  According to the Weather Channel remarked that “for the first time since the Great Depression, it's possible that two tropical systems could make landfall in the mainland United States at virtually the same time.”  I remember this from my meteorology studies at Mississippi State University but honestly had to do some digging to get some information on what is known as the “Fujiwhara effect.”

The Fujiwhara effect is dependent on many variables, and the hashtag has exploded on Twitter.  What exactly is the Fujiwhara effect?  My weather idol James Spann explained it best on Twitter, “a situation where the two nearby cyclonic vortices orbit each other and close the distance.”  He also provided a more in-depth overview on his AlabamaWx weather blog, FUJIWHARA EFFECT: There is a chance that these two tropical systems could have an interaction known as the “Fujiwhara effect”… a phenomenon that occurs when two nearby cyclonic vortices orbit each other and close the distance between the circulations of their corresponding low-pressure areas. They won’t merge, but the tracks of one or both systems could be impacted by this. It depends on the size and intensity; we just don’t know that right now.”

I will continue to monitor these systems in the tropics and provided updates often.

(Source) For more from the Weather Channel, click here.  For more from the twitter page for James Spann, click here.  For the AlabamaWx weather blog, click here.