Will Hurricane Franklin pull a Pac-Man and gobble up Tropical Storm Jose? It would be rare, but likely to happen
After the tumult of Hurricane Idalia had waned in Florida, meteorologist Craig Setzer decided to have a bit of fun on social media and depict Hurricane Franklin as a ravenous Pac-Man about to devour a hapless Tropical Storm Jose.
“In a bit of meteorological curiosity, big Hurricane Franklin moving northeast in the Atlantic, and small newly formed Tropical Storm Jose are about to meet,” Setzer wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “In what is similar to atmospheric Pac-Man, Franklin will gobble up (absorb) Jose in a few days.”
Does Setzer’s Pac-man depiction mean Franklin gains hurricane points and super-sizes into some sort of superstorm after digesting Jose? Not quite. Some of it depends on the geometry of their collision. “For the Atlantic this is rare,” Setzer said.
In its 11 a.m. Friday advisory, the National Hurricane Center said it expects the absorption to happen. “Jose is expected to become absorbed by Franklin tonight or early Saturday,” it said.
There are three things that can happen.
If the storms are relatively equal in size, something called the Fujiwhara Effect can occur, meaning the storms dance around each other in a do-si-do. The second possibility is called the satellite effect where the smaller storm rotates around the larger storm. Setzer said that if Jose crosses in front of Franklin, it could get sling-shotted around and not absorbed.
But the more likely possibility, he said, is called absorption, where the bigger storm just overwhelms the small storm.
Given the geometry of Franklin and Jose’s eventual collision, the dirty side of Franklin will be spinning in direct opposition to the clean weaker side of Jose and obliterate it.
“It may enhance the side of Franklin a little bit, but after about 12 hours you just don’t see it anymore. It’s like, wow, the big storm just ate it up. … Franklin is a big bully in the Atlantic.”
If Franklin gobbles Jose up, it could get an injection of hot moist tropical air, which would actually thermodynamically strengthen Franklin.
As for what inspired the post, Setzer wrote on X, “I figure we need a moment of levity. Hurricane season is serious stuff, find the rays of sunshine when you can.”
Some Pac-Man fanatics quickly pointed out to Setzer that his ghost was the wrong color — when Pac-Man eats a “power pellet,” giving him the ability to eat the ghosts, the ghosts turn blue.
“Some people said to me, you’ve got a red ghost, you need a blue ghost. I’m like, you know what, all of you literal people, take a chill.”
