A powerful storm clobbered Washington state on Wednesday, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of people while disrupting road travel and causing at least one death and two injuries. The storm with tropical-storm-force winds of 50 mph (80 kph) and gusts around 70 mph felled trees and power lines overnight. The storm, called a "bomb cyclone" when the storm rapidly intensifies, is going to stall over northern California in the next few days. On Friday, rainfall could reach up to 20 inches (508 mm) in parts of southwest Oregon and northern California. A bomb cyclone rapidly intensifies in 24 hours or less when a cold air mass from the polar region collides with warm tropical air in a process that meteorologists call bombogenesis.
It knocked out electricity to more than 600,000 homes and businesses in Washington, southwest Oregon and northern California, according to Poweroutage.us. The windstorm and heavy rain also damaged the power system in Canada's Pacific coast province of British Columbia and cut power to some 225,000 customers Tuesday night, according to the provincial electricity provider BC Hydro. By Wednesday morning, about 100,000 customers, mostly on Vancouver Island, remained without power. Winds should die down across the region by midday, but the storm has moved to California and is set to bring extreme rainfall by the end of the week.
Source: Reuters