Rare 'double hurricanes' hurtle towards US - and could blast UK with wind and rain

A pair of large tropical storms are threatening to bring a deluge to the UK - as forecasters eye up whether the two might combine into a rare 'Fujiwhara' phenomenon.

Hurricane Humberto and tropical storm Imelda are set to pound the western Atlantic this week, including parts of the Caribbean and western coast of the US. Humberto, which is currently to the south of Bermuda, has strengthened to become a major category 4 hurricane in the past few days.

Meanwhile hot on its tail a second storm, named Imelda, has formed, with forecasterswarning it will strengthen to hurricane-force as it moves north from the Bahamas.

Both storms are set to move north over the course of the next 24 hours before turning sharply east and speeding across the Atlantic.

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With large swells and life-threatening conditions predicted from the storms for parts of Florida and Georgia, forecasters are now gauging what the arrival of the weather systems would mean for the UK and Europe.

From midweek onwards the storms are forecast to head eastwards into the Atlantic from where they may get captured by the jet stream and whisked north-eastwards towards the British Isles.

While lacking their earlier ferocity the weather systems still have the powers to bring some very disruptive conditions to UK shores. Ahead of the storms, a frontal system is expected to hit the UK on Wednesday with a yellow warning in place for rain for parts of western Scotland from 5pm Wednesday until 6am Friday.

Then the rain is likely to become even heavier and more widespread when the remnants of Hurricane Humberto make landfall this weekend with strong winds and large waves likely, which could lead to further weather warnings from forecasters.

Meanwhile Tropical Storm Imelda will take longer to reach us, spending at least the next week out at sea with less certainty about whether it could follow a similar path to Humberto towards the UK.

Forecasters are predicting the possibility of the storm’s arrival bringing the UK our first named storm of the season. But the exact interaction of the two storms is hard to forecast.

When two storms develop so close together they cab influence each other’s course and strength in ways that are hard to predict, sometimes merging, sometimes flying apart from each other and at other times they “dance” around each other in a circular pattern.

"The influence from the much stronger and larger Humberto will tug at Imelda and help pull the storm away from the U.S. and out to sea,” AccuWeather Lead Hurricane Expert Alex DaSilva explained.

It remains to be seen whether the storms will combine into a rare 'Fujiwhara', where two weaker or smaller storms merge and combine into one larger storm.

But forecasters at the BBC predict the most likely outcome with Humberto and Imelda is that whilst Humberto moves eastwards faster, some of its residual energy and moisture will get incorporated into storm Imelda.