This year’s bomb cyclone season has rolled around once again, and a powerful one exacerbated by a massive atmospheric river could be bearing down on the Pacific Northwest and Northern California, weather experts warned Tuesday.
“Powerful Pacific storm to impact the West Coast with heavy rain, life-threatening flooding, wind and higher elevation mountain snow beginning tonight,” the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center warned Tuesday afternoon.
The storm was expected to disrupt travel in the region, AccuWeather reported.
An atmospheric river is a long plume of moisture trailing far out into the Pacific Ocean, and the one drifting toward the West Coast is the season’s strongest so far.
The accompanying storm will intensify quickly enough to be labeled a bomb cyclone, National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center meteorologist Richard Bann said.
A bomb cyclone happens when atmospheric pressure plummets by at least 24 millibars within 24 hours amid a storm, resulting in a phenomenon known as bombogenesis. The central pressure of the storm bearing down on northern California and southern Oregon is slated to reach “double the criteria for a bomb cyclone,” AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Heather Zehr said.
Flood and high-wind watches were going into effect Tuesday in northern California, which was bracing for up to 8 inches of rain predicted for parts of the San Francisco Bay Area, North Coast and Sacramento Valley.
Last year brought similar conditions as California was beset by a series of drenching atmospheric rivers and storms, one of which killed two people.
With News Wire Services
