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    • The ‘bomb cyclone’ forecast calls for wind, rain and snow during power outages
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    The ‘bomb cyclone’ forecast calls for wind, rain and snow during power outages

    Vaseline Posted on

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    Editor’s note: This page is a summary of the Northwest Bomb Cyclone news from Wednesday, November 20. For the latest news, see our story from Thursday, November 21.

    Two people were killed and others injured when a “bomb cyclone” lashed the Pacific Northwest with high winds and rain on Wednesday, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of people in Washington state, amid forecasts calling for even more dangerous rain, flooding and snow in the region.

    Two women in suburban Seattle were killed separately by falling trees, and two other people were injured by falling trees southeast of the city.

    The ferocious storm resembles a winter hurricane, with winds of up to 120 km per hour, and brings with it a whole host of dangers. In addition to toppling trees and causing widespread power outages, the high winds have also blocked roads and destroyed homes.

    After the bomb cyclone, the region faces days of rain, “life-threatening flooding” and snow at higher elevations due to another Pacific storm, the National Weather Service said Wednesday. That’s part of an ‘atmospheric river’ that can support up to 16 people. Inches of rain are also likely in areas of Northern California and southwestern Oregon, according to the service.

    Impacts from the first storm are expected to last until early Thursday, and the subsequent lull will be short-lived as the second system reaches its peak Thursday evening, the NWS said.

    According to the weather service, that second wave will bring even heavier rainfall that will turn into sleet at higher elevations in the Cascade Mountains. That snowfall combined with wind gusts in the 60 mph range will lead to snowstorms.

    Seattle has its worst power outage since 2006

    Although the majority of Washington’s power outages occurred outside of Seattle, the city experienced its largest number of power outages since 2006, the Seattle Times reported.

    At one point there were 114,000 Seattle City Light customers in the dark on Tuesday evening, but that number had dwindled to 36,000 by 1pm PT on Wednesday.

    “Restoring power to remaining customers will depend on the severity of the damage,” mayoral spokesperson Callie Craighead told the newspaper.

    In addition to blocking countless roads and snarling traffic, the fallen trees also affected public transportation in at least one other way. A large tree fell on a King County Metro bus in north Seattle on Tuesday evening, the Times reported. No injuries have been reported.

    Tracy Meloy of Issaquah, about 17 miles (27 kilometers) southeast of Seattle, told the Associated Press that she heard a lot of noise from wind and debris throughout the night. As she surveyed the damage Wednesday morning, she noticed tree limbs and other vegetation on the road in front of her home.

    “It looks like a forest floor instead of a street,” she said.

    Strong winds and fallen trees: a dangerous combination

    Strong winds are knocking down trees across Washington, including in Lynnwood, where a woman in her 50s died after a large tree fell on a homeless encampment, South County Fire said Tuesday.

    Map of power outages in Washington: Bomb cyclone knocks out power to nearly 600,000 homes and businesses

    Two other people were injured when a tree fell on a trailer less than 40 miles away in Maple Valley, Puget Sound firefighters on the X platform said. One person was quickly freed, but it took firefighters an hour to rescue the second, Puget Sound Fire said.

    Fire officials in Bellevue said trees were down across the city and some fell on homes. The department warned residents to seek shelter on the lowest floor and stay away from windows.

    In Seattle, fallen trees blocked roads and trapped one person in a vehicle, fire officials said.

    According to poweroutage.us, more than 350,000 customers in Washington and 32,000 in California were without power as of 4 p.m. on Wednesday. The outages, downed trees and high winds prompted at least one Washington school district to cancel classes.

    More: Bomb cyclones are powerful winter storms. Here’s a visual overview of how they’re made.

    A wind gust of 101 km/h was reported

    The National Weather Service warned that the gusts will likely increase the number of downed trees and power outages, especially in coastal areas where heavy, wet snow has accumulated. Peak wind gusts of 100 miles per hour were recorded in Canadian waters by a buoy off the coast of Vancouver Island, the National Weather Service in Seattle said.

    Wind gusts reached 60 miles per hour at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on Tuesday evening, and gusts of 60 miles per hour were recorded in Eugene, Oregon.

    Winds are expected to gradually decrease Wednesday afternoon with the departure from the region of the very deep low-pressure system brewing 300 miles off the Washington coast that is responsible, the weather service said.

    Seattle residents are staying home and preparing for power outages

    Austin Miller bikes to his retail job in downtown Seattle most days, but chose to ride the bus Wednesday morning because heavy rain was falling. Miller, 30, said he is taking his portable phone charger everywhere this week in case the power goes out.

    On Tuesday evening, Miller went straight home after work and stayed inside, watching the new television series “Dune” on HBO to avoid the storm. Outside, the wind was howling and the lights started flickering around 8 p.m., Miller told USA TODAY. As the night wore on, sirens continued to blare outside the fire station across from his home in the city’s International District.

    “They have an American flag out front, and I’ve seen that flag waving around pretty good,” Miller said, describing the wind.

    Atmospheric river incoming

    As the bomb cyclone moves away, prolonged heavy rain from an atmospheric river will bring more than a foot of rain to Northern California and southwestern Oregon through Friday, the weather service said. A separate low-pressure system is forecast to strengthen off the northwest coast on Friday, bringing another round of strong winds, amplifying the effects of the atmospheric river and increasing the risk of flooding.

    Atmospheric rivers, also called ‘rivers in the sky’, are a major factor in extreme rain and snowfall in the West. They function much like rivers on the surface, but can carry significantly more water than the Mississippi River.

    Mountain snow levels will rise quickly Wednesday and pass-level travel will be impossible due to snowstorms in the Cascades and far Northern California.

    AccuWeather warned Tuesday that the bomb cyclone “would act like a huge rain hose at low elevations and a giant snow cannon over the high country.”

    “The storm is just getting started,” said Rich Otto, a meteorologist at the NWS Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.

    “The biggest wave is Thursday. We expect 10 to 18 inches of rain on Friday; as much as 20 inches in some places,” Otto said, with the biggest concerns for southwestern Oregon and Northern California.

    More: Washington Power Outage Map: Bomb Cyclone Knocks Out Power to Nearly 600,000 Homes and Businesses

    What is a bomb cyclone?

    A bomb cyclone – a powerful cold-season coastal storm so named because of its explosive power – is colloquially known as a winter hurricane.

    Such storms undergo an intensification process known as bombogenesis, which is a rapid drop in atmospheric pressure, marking the strengthening of the storm, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

    Bombogenesis is said to occur when a storm’s central barometric pressure drops by at least 24 millibars within 24 hours. A millibar is a way to measure pressure. The lower the pressure, the more powerful the storm.

    Some of the most intense winter storms to batter the country’s coasts are bomb cyclones.

    The word ‘bombogenesis’ is a combination of ‘cyclogenesis’, which describes the formation of a cyclone or storm, and ‘bomb’ because of its explosiveness.

    “This can happen when a cold air mass collides with a warm air mass, such as air over warm ocean water,” NOAA said. “The formation of this rapidly strengthening weather system is a process called bombogenesis, which creates a so-called bomb cyclone.”

    A record strong storm

    Weather.com meteorologist Chris Dolce said in an online report that the current storm “more than doubled” the criteria for bombogenesis: barometric pressure dropped by 24 millibars or more in 24 hours or less.

    In addition, Dolce reported that estimated pressure dropped to just 942 millibars, according to a Tuesday evening analysis from NOAA’s Weather Prediction Center. “That’s nearly on par with an October 2021 storm (942.5 millibars) for the lowest pressure in about 50 years of records for the northeast Pacific Ocean.”

    (This story has been updated to add new information.)

    Contributors: Claire Thornton, USA TODAY; Reuters

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