I have a few questions for anyone more knowledgeable about this:
1. Do the weaker storm(s) have a greater potential to be slingshotted in Fujiwhara situations? And, if so, doesn’t that make the storm to the east a very dangerous driver for the storm to the west, assuming it develops more quickly?
2. How well do models tend to do with Fujiwhara interactions? I feel like I’ve never seen it before, or, if I have, it’s always in voodoo land for the models.
3. Does a Fujiwhara interaction have any implications on the intensity of these storms?
4. Is a merger possible in Fujiwhara situations?
Sorry for the plethora of questions, but you simply don’t see this very often and this has completely piqued my interest.
I'm NOT a meteorologist, so take my answers with a grain of salt!
@JPWX maybe you can weigh in?
When I've seen it happen, it's usually in the Pacific Ocean and the interactions can be extremely complex. That being said, I'm not sure about a slingshot effect, but it seems plausible.
Models have, in my limited experience, a HARD time with interactions like these because they have to get within a certain radius of each other before they start to dance around each other, and the interactions are dependent on the strengths of the storms, so since the path + intensity play into effect, it's really a wild Wild West for the models.
Yes, the interaction can drastically affect the intensity of these storms. Typically, the larger more powerful storm "eats" the smaller one after a half or full rotation around each other, but more complex outcomes are possible.
The GFS, Euro, Euro-AI, and others are all showing some interaction possible, and at hurricane strength for each of them look to be possible. Two hurricanes spinning around each other that close to the U.S. is 1) dangerous and 2) as far as I can recall, unprecedented. Like I said, most of the time, this happens in the open Pacific.
