China Takes Two Typhoons At Once

This graphic from AccuWeather.com caught my eye today, and after some research it looks like we have two typhoons heading to make landfall in (relatively) close proximity to each other on the coast of China!

Our story says "Both Typhoon Saola and Tropical Storm Damrey are on course to strike China's eastern coast later this week, likely within 500 miles and 18 hours of each other." Since yesterday however, the NAVY ATCF forecast has increased Damrey to have 75 knot sustained winds before landfall, qualifying it as a Typhoon as well. Here's another way of looking at it -- this is the estimated coverage of sustained winds of at least Tropical Storm force this week in the Western Pacific (loop here):

Of course, China is a big country; what would this be equivalent to in the United States? It would be equally unbelievable, with a Hurricane striking New York City and Myrtle Beach at the same time, or Cape Hatteras and Orlando. The Western Pacific is known for its tropical hijinks though... what with their storms that spin around each other (the Fujiwhara effect). The best example I could find was with Typhoon Amber and Tropical Storm Cass, which made landfall less than 200 miles and 18 hours apart in 1997 -- of course, they weren't both typhoons. Their tracks are shown below, from the AccuWeather.com Interactive Hurricane Tracker. I don't have a way to easily search the typhoon database, so if you find more recent, or closer examples, please leave me a comment.