Blizzard conditions of 'bomb cyclone' head for US Northeast

After dumping snow in Florida for the first time in 30 years blizzard conditions are marching northward. The severe drop in pressure along the coast has intensified the snowy conditions, creating a 'bomb cyclone' in the Northeast.

|
Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
A woman is seen walking through a snowy street during blizzard conditions in Long Beach, N.Y., on Jan. 4.

Heavy snow and high winds pounded the US East Coast along a front stretching from Maine as far south as North Carolina early on Thursday, knocking out power, icing over roadways, and closing hundreds of schools.

The storm is the product of a rapid and rare sharp drop in barometric pressure known as bombogenesis, or bomb cyclone.

On Wednesday it dumped snow on Florida's capital Tallahassee for the first time in 30 years, and was expected to last through the day.

States of emergency were in effect in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia and there were blizzard warnings from the Canadian border as far south as Virginia.

Federal government offices were delaying opening for two hours on Thursday.

Much of the eastern United States is in the grip of a sustained cold spell that has frozen part of Niagara Falls, played havoc with public works and impeded firefighting in places where temperatures barely broke 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

Areas around Boston were forecast to see about 1 foot of snow on Thursday, and the National Weather Service predicted a similar amount and wind gusts of up to 55 miles per hour in New York City.

Schools were ordered to close in both cities.

"This could bring some very dangerous conditions," New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said late on Wednesday.

"Both rush hours will be affected," Boston Mayor Marty Walsh told a news conference. "Be patient. With the amount of snow we're getting here, we could be plowing your street and a half hour later it could look like we haven't been there."

Private forecaster Accuweather said snow would fall quickly during the day, at a rate of several inches per hour, with the storm intensified by the bombogenesis effect.

The phenomenon occurs when a storm's barometric pressure drops by 24 millibars in 24 hours.

The rare type of storm struck the US Southeast on Wednesday, also dumping snow in parts of South Carolina and eastern Georgia, said meteorologist Patrick Burke of the federal Weather Prediction Center.

More than 35,000 customers were without power in Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia early on Thursday, utilities reported online.

A part of US-13 at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel in Virginia was closed due to high winds early on Thursday while state transportation departments throughout the region reported dozens of delays due to deteriorating roads conditions.

Late on Wednesday night, a baggage car and two sleeper cars on an Amtrak train traveling from Miami to New York, with 311 passengers aboard, derailed in as it was slowly backing into a station in Savannah, Georgia. No one was injured, an Amtrak spokesman said.

The cold has been blamed for at least nine deaths over the past few days, including two homeless people in Houston.

This story was reported by Reuters.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Blizzard conditions of 'bomb cyclone' head for US Northeast
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2018/0104/Blizzard-conditions-of-bomb-cyclone-head-for-US-Northeast
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe