Posted on 11/20/2024 1:24:32 AM PST by Libloather
SEATTLE (AP) — A major storm swept across the northwest U.S. Tuesday evening, battering the region with strong winds and rain and causing widespread power outages and downed trees that killed at least one person.
The Weather Prediction Center issued excessive rainfall risks through Friday and hurricane-force wind warnings were in effect as the strongest atmospheric river — a large plume of moisture — that California and the Pacific Northwest has seen this season overwhelms the region. The storm system is considered a “ bomb cyclone,” which occurs when a cyclone intensifies rapidly.
Downed trees struck homes and littered roads across northwest Washington. In Lynnwood, Washington, a woman died Tuesday night when a large tree fell on a homeless encampment, South County Fire said in a statement on X. In Seattle, a tree fell onto a vehicle, temporarily trapping a person inside, the Seattle Fire Department reported. The agency later said the individual was in stable condition.
“Trees are coming down all over the city & falling onto homes,” the fire department in Bellevue, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) east of Seattle, posted on the social platform X. “If you can, go to the lowest floor and stay away from windows. Do not go outside if you can avoid it.”
**SNIP**
As of 8 p.m., the peak wind speed was in Canadian waters, where gusts of 101 mph (163 kph) were reported off the coast of Vancouver Island, according to the National Weather Service in Seattle. Along the Oregon coast, there were wind gusts as high at 79 mph (127 kph) Tuesday evening, according to the National Weather Service in Medford, Oregon, while wind speed of 77 mph (124 kph) was recorded at Mount Rainier in Washington.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
I grew up on northern Oregon - we had a house on the beach.
I recall one storm in the 70’s I was watching our anemometer — it pegged at 120 MPH then blew off of the house...
There was a lot of damage in the town, the sign in front of our restaurant blew apart ant it was good for 100+ MPH winds (the sign was 2 miles from the ocean).
We just called it a bad storm...
Can we just go back to simple descriptions of storms as small medium and big.
very big, hugh and wow look at the size of this one.
The expected river of atmospheric pressure when added to a (West coast)cyclone/ hurricane (East coast) can be catastrophic.
Don't forget that Hurricane Helene that hit Florida, Georgia, and the Appalachians,
flooded the hillsides and rivers, blew down trees which temporarily dammed up the rivers which later fell apart,
sending a deluge of water into the lowlands.
Massive erosion of the valleys just added to the debris and thus isolated those along the valleys.
This storm potential ain't no joke !
I blame Trump as he pissed off the Russians and they turned on their weather making machine. That’s why it called a bomb cyclone.
I live in Oregon, Cascades Western foothills, 50 miles south of Portland. My house lost power at about 5:00 pm yesterday but got it back about 6:15. Outages were not widespread.
Heavily forested area, it seems like we lose power whenever a cloud sneezes.
That’s them.
I’m talking about REAL meteorologists.
You and I know that but lots of people blow off anything as insignificant that they don’t experience themselves.
I worked in Gold Beach, OR in the late 70s. There were some pretty good storms every winter. One night I was driving my ‘66 VW bug on 101, south from Port Orford, and the state cops had traffic stopped at Humbug Mountain because of the wind. When they let us through, I was behind a wood-chip semi going about 20 mph and watched the wind blowing it sideways across the highway toward the creek. At the last moment the wind dropped a little and the road curved, so he made it. That was November or December of 1978, I think, though it could have been 1977. I wonder if it was the same storm that took your anemometer?
The Columbus Day Storm in 1962 was about the worst windstorm I remember. I was 7 years old and living in the West Hills of Portland then. We lost power for about a week or ten days then.
They must have only used the term amongst themselves because I don’t ever recall hearing about it until recently. Growing up during the cold war, I do recall many times the weatherman forecasting how we would be getting cold fronts coming down from communist Siberia, but not bomb cyclones, or atmospheric rivers, or polar vortexes. Now that the cold war is over I guess the nationality of the cold fronts don’t matter so much, but they must be made to seem more ferocious, mean, and angry cold fronts because humans have mistreated mother nature or something.
I think that has changed as their knowledge of how the atmosphere moves has increased.
Thank you professor.
The storm I recall was about ‘72-’74ish...
I was in CA for the Columbus Day storm but had ALOT of friends that told me about it! That was some storm!
“Bomb cyclone” — A rainstorm with an excellent promoter/press agent.
Yes, the CD Storm was something. I read somewhere that the Coast Guard weather station at Hebo, OR lost its anemometer to a 160-mph gust. I haven’t been to Portland in about 20 years, but you could still see flat-topped Douglas firs that had had their tops snapped off instead of the whole tree being blown down. We were lucky in that two big Doug firs landed in our back yard with just the tips brushing the house, though they did crush the jungle gym.
When the wind was really picking up on the afternoon the storm hit, I was convinced that if I went out in the street and held out my coat, I could fly. For some reason, my mom didn’t think that was a good idea, so I never found out.
“For some reason, my mom didn’t think that was a good idea, so I never found out.”
HA!
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