Global Discussion : Laura and MarcoAdded : Sunday at 11:15 An interesting few days ahead in the Gulf of Mexico with Tropical Storms Marco and Laura both expected to develop and make landfall across the Southern States within hours of each other.
You can see Marco up clearly to the North of the Yukatan Peninsula and Laura to the East affecting the Dominican Republic.
On Monday, Marco is expected to move Northwest and make landfall around the Louisiana coastline on Monday night :-
Meanwhile, Laura will move West across Cuba and then into the Gulf of Mexico during the course of Monday before models show it making landfall around a similar region on Wednesday :-
There still remains considerable uncertainty over whether or how quickly Marco can intensify. At present it's a small and rather ragged system, but Marco is expected to become hurricane status today.
There also remains huge uncertainty over how land interaction with Cuba will affect Laura, although strengthening is likely once she moves into the Gulf.
Whilst it's rare to have two active tropical storms in the Gulf of Mexico, it's not without precedence. It's happened in 1933 and 1959. Also worth noting that Laura and Marco will not merge or collide or anything like that. Even if two tropical systems get close to each other, then the Fujiwhara effect takes place where they gravitate towards each other then the outflow of one system affects the inflow of the other until one absorbs the other, but the process of this tends to destroy both systems due to the messy physics as opposed to creating a more powerful system.
Mid-latitude lows are different in this respect, where absorption can deepen a primary low, but tropical systems work differently to this. That said, Marco and Laura remain far apart enough for this bit to be hypothetical anyway. |