New Delhi: A scary storm was unleashed from a ‘bomb cyclone’ over the Pacific Ocean slammed ashore Sunday in drought-plagued Northern California and the Pacific Northwest.
Reports say, the storm blasted the West Coast with heavy rain, damaging winds, flooding and mudslides.
Over 160,000 homes and businesses in California, more than 170,000 in Washington, and over 28,000 in Oregon were left without power on Sunday reported the USA Today.
Two people were killed when a tree fell on their vehicle in Seattle area.
Flooding across the San Francisco Bay Area closed streets in Berkeley and inundated the Bay Bridge toll plaza in Oakland.
By Sunday morning, Mount Tamalpais, just north of San Francisco, had recorded a half-foot of rainfall during the previous 12 hours, the weather service said.
The National Weather Service in Sacramento warned of “potentially historic” rain for the city’s downtown.
A bomb cyclone forms when air pressure rapidly drops as the storm explosively strengthens.
The phenomenon was pulling deep tropical moisture from the Pacific, creating an “atmospheric river,” AccuWeather Meteorologist Jon Porter said. He described the river as a “firehose of moisture in the sky” capable of unleashing intense rain and mountain snow.
This phenomena is technically called ‘Explosive cyclogenesis’ which is the rapid deepening of an extratropical cyclonic low-pressure area. The change in pressure needed to classify something as explosive cyclogenesis is latitude dependent.
(With Inputs From: USA Today)
Ms Kalinga