Powerful “Bomb Cyclone” Slams Pacific Northwest

The Weather Channel reports:

A “bomb cyclone” has become one of the northeast Pacific’s strongest storms on record, resulting in damaging winds across the Pacific Northwest overnight.

This storm’s impacts aren’t done yet, however, since it is also hauling in a strong, long-duration atmospheric river to the region, which is likely to produce flooding rain and feet of mountain snow.

The storm easily met the criteria for what meteorologists call bombogenesis, from where the term “bomb cyclone” originates. That means its pressure dropped by 24 or more millibars in 24 hours or less. This storm more than doubled that criteria.

The New York Times reports:

Washington State felt the initial brunt of the system as strong winds downed trees and power lines in and around the Seattle area on Tuesday night. Hundreds of thousands of electricity customers in the state had no power as of early Wednesday morning. A woman in her 50s was killed after a large tree fell on a homeless encampment in Lynnwood, Wash., the local fire department said.

Marty Ralph, the director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes, said this storm was predicted to produce as much as 20 percent of the rainfall the region would expect in a year. He said this one storm would help get the wet season in Northern California off to a strong start. For the Bay Area, Wednesday will be the most intense day, forecasters said, with a brief reprieve on Thursday,

ABC News reports this morning that over 600,000 homes are without power in Washington state.