Seattle – Rapidly Developing Effects “Bomb Cyclone” devastates the Seattle area Tuesday night, two people died and hundreds of thousands lost power as winds of 50-75 mph downed trees across the region.
A woman died after a tree fell on her home near Bellevue just after 7 p.m., according to Bellevue Fire DepartmentDuring this time, South County Fire Officer Another woman was reported killed in Lynnwood when a tree fell on a camp site.
South of Seattle, a tree fell on their trailer in Maple Valley, injuring two others. Puget Sound Fire reported,
One person was rescued immediately, but it took firefighters an hour to rescue another resident trapped under the debris. Both were taken to local hospitals, but their conditions were not released.
A tree fell on a car in the northeast part of the city late Tuesday, trapping a driver, the Seattle Fire Department said. The man was rescued and taken to hospital in stable condition.
An Amtrak train headed from Vancouver, B.C., to Seattle collided with a fallen tree near Stanwood Station on Tuesday night at about 8 p.m. Amtrak officials said none of the 47 passengers were hurt. The train was delayed by four hours and had to be towed.
Washington State Patrol Trooper Rick Johnson said Wednesday he has received reports of 11 crashes in King County involving cars hitting trees. The agency said no serious injuries were reported.
‘Trees are being cut everywhere’
Wind gusts reached more than 70 mph in the Cascade foothills just east of Seattle, driven by a low-pressure center that underwent explosive development within a matter of hours as it moved off the Washington coast.
An estimated 700,000 people were without power as power outages peaked in Western Washington on Wednesday morning. According to PowerOutage.US,
More than 100,000 of them were in the city of Seattle. The total number of outages dropped to less than half a million by Wednesday afternoon, but some utilities warned it could take days to restore power in the worst-hit areas.
Wind gusts reached 74 mph in the town of Enumclaw before it gets dark along with the rest of the city at the wind gauge.
“The sound in here is unreal!” Anthony Concannon said. “The wind in the trees and power lines is deafening.”
In Bellevue, the state’s fifth-most populous city, firefighters were dispatched to respond to reports of trees blown into homes in several areas due to the storm’s gusts of up to 52 mph.
“Trees are falling on houses all over the city,” Bellevue fire officials said“If you can, go to the lowest floor and stay away from windows. “Don’t go out if you can avoid it.”
The Department of State and Local Cities said downed trees and power lines blocked several major highways, including busy State Routes 18, 516 and 169. Just before midnight, a tree fell on four lanes of Interstate 405 in Bellevue.
“There are a lot of trees and power lines, we will keep posting locations until the lights are back on,” one Desperate Snohomish Regional Fire and Rescue posted on X.
Easterly winds reached 59 mph at Sea-Tac Airport, where rare easterly winds brought a challenging crosswind for pilots to navigate on runways aligned to the consistent southerly winds that the area typically endures.
Bomb cyclone drops 66 millibar pressure in 24 hours
This storm was caused by a historic storm that moved from an innocuous low pressure trough. The strongest storm ever recorded in that part of the Pacific OceanMeasurements showed that the storm dropped 66 millibars in pressure in 24 hours, eventually becoming a hurricane with a central pressure of 942 millibars – equivalent to a major Category 4 hurricane. This easily qualifies for the title of “bomb cyclone”, when a storm strengthens to about 24 millibars in 24 hours.
While the storm’s deep center remained hundreds of miles away, the storm’s alignment west of the Washington coast combined with cold, dense high pressure over eastern Washington created a tremendous difference in pressure across the western half of the state.
The wind coming from eastern Washington hit the barrier created by the Cascade Mountains, but gaps in the terrain along the mountain passes created cracks in the barrier, allowing the winds to accelerate and escape through the passes like holes in a balloon.
The winds devastated towns in the foothills that lie along highways that provide gateways to popular hiking trails and ski resorts.
As easterly winds reached the western flanks of the Cascades and were freed from their mountain hostages, they raced into the Puget Sound lowlands, bringing rare easterly winds that left wild landscapes ripe for the region’s more common southerly winds. This resulted in widespread downed trees from north to south in the Puget Sound region.
Winds have been slowing since Wednesday morning, allowing a massive cleanup effort to begin.
(tags to translate)US news(T)hurricanes(T)extreme weather(T)Seattle(T)Washington
