This study examines the role that buoyancy and vertical wind shear play in
modulating the relationship between storm interactions and storm severity.
Using an idealized numerical model, 240 supercell interactions are simulated
under systematically varied amounts of buoyancy and vertical wind shear.
Small changes in buoyancy or vertical wind shear have signi cant impacts on
post-interaction storm morphology. A wide amount of variation in low-level
rotation is seen across the simulation suite. Two-cell storm simulations are
not always stronger than one-cell control simulations. Migration of low-level
vertical vorticity centers is ubiquitous through all runs, but orientation of
and interaction between two storms' gust fronts modulates where the vortic-
ity center will end up. Gust fronts in better alignment have more vorticity
centers reach an updraft where they are stretched and intensi ed. With re-
spect to storm mode, higher buoyancy produced less classic supercells while
higher shear produced more classic supercells. High precipitation supercells
were favored with two-cell simulations where the second cell was directly to
the southwest of the control cell. Secondary cells that were close to the con-
trol merged quickly and were often stronger than simulations with large cell
separation distance. Further questions remain with trajectories and machine
learning algorithms are tthe next steps for a more detailed analysis of this
large data set
