Could Hurricane Matthew combine with Hurricane Nicole over the Atlantic?
AS Hurricane Matthew batters Florida, here is a look at whether it could absorb Hurricane Nicole over the Atlantic.
Hurricane Matthew and Hurricane Nicole are both over the Atlantic
The ferocious hurricane has already left a terrible trail of destruction across the US and Caribbean, killing more than 400 hundred people in Haiti.
But the second hurricane over the Atlantic, Nicole, remains well south of the Bahamas and is not forecast to hit land or cause devastation.
Nevertheless many Americans are already worrying about what would happen if the two hurricanes were to collide and merge together.
Christopher DeLaune posted on Twitter: “Let me ask this question, what happens if Hurricane Matthew and Hurricane Nicole combine…..”
We're gonna be stuck in a loop of death and I'm willing to bet hurricane Matthew will combine with Nicole which means even more death pic.twitter.com/DrpSnbAduV
— holy cow (@godonbathsalts) October 7, 2016
I swear if Matthew and Nicole start dating and combine into one major hurricane, there may not be time to run away from that one!
— Victoria Mikulec (@VictoriaMikulec) October 7, 2016
Uh what happens if Hurricane Matthew and T.S Nicole combine?! What would the name be?! Would it be a super storm!?
— Courtney (@diabeticgirl13) October 5, 2016
The two hurricanes are not interacting at the moment, but Matthew is expected to leave the East Coast then go out to sea and weaken in coming days.
Met Office tropical prediction scientist Julian Hemming said there was still a possibility that Mathew could interact with Nicole at some point.
“It might come close enough to Nicole to induce some kind of interaction,” he said. “The amount of interaction with Matthew is a bit of an unknown quality at the moment.”
Even if the hurricanes do move towards each other, it is still not known what would actually happen in this scenario.
Mr Heming said: “They could rotate around each other for a time or move in tandem then move apart.”
This map shows the position of Matthew and Nicole at about 6pm UK time on October 7
He said that there is a chance that Nicole could be absorbed by Nicole even though this possibility is reflected in the computer models at the moment.
If that happens to a hurricane, he said: “It gets drawn in and becomes part of the larger system. There’s not great implications.
“If it’s clear that one is being absorbed by the other the weaker one is deemed to have dissipated.”
Nicole is currently forecast to drift southwards before possibly backtracking northward early next week. But Mr Heming noted: “It could go in any direction.”
Hurricane Nicole forms behind Matthew
After Hurricane Matthew goes out to sea there is a chance that it could loop around to hit Florida and Bahamas for a second time.
If that did happen then Matthew would have already weakened considerably by that point and would not pose such as threat.