Millions of people in the U.S. were under a bomb cyclone warning Monday amid a peak season for road travel across the country as the holiday season winds down.
A Monday alert from the National Weather Service warned that “an intense cyclone is currently in progress across the northern tier of the country.” It said impacts from the storm could range from heavy snow to blizzard conditions across the upper Midwest to the Great Lakes to freezing rain across New England and thunderstorms and heavy rain across the eastern U.S. and the South as well as blustery winds.
The New York Post reported Sunday evening that 40 million people across the country had been placed on bomb cyclone alert. CBS News reported Monday that high wind alerts were issued for more than 114 million people across the eastern U.S. It also said that millions were under various alerts due to severe winter weather.
Residents of Green Bay, Wisc.; Chicago Ill.; Detroit, Mich.; Indianapolis, Ind.; Pittsburgh, Pa.; Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Pa.; New York City, N.Y.; and Boston, Mass., were in the path of the cyclone. Per CBS, the storm could bring 6 to 10 inches of snow by Tuesday.
“As this system reaches peak intensity early this morning, blizzard conditions can be expected especially over the central Great Lakes,” the NWS said.
In Minnesota, the bomb cyclone conditions already resulted in a blizzard that caused havoc on Sunday. WWJ Newsradio reported that high winds had caused power outages across Southeast Michigan this week, while snow squalls caused numerous crashes. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is bracing for up to 21 inches of snow with winds gusting to 65 mph, creating near-zero visibility.
CBS meteorologist Rob Marciano explained that a bomb cyclone, also known as bombogenesis, is “much like a hurricane that rapidly intensifies,” but in this case has materialized as a winter storm. He noted that it has already “triggered some dangerous weather.”
According to the National Ocean Service, bomb cyclones happen when “a midlatitude (the latitudes between the tropics and polar regions) cyclone rapidly intensifies, or strengthens, over a 24-hour period,” measured by a drop in millibars. Marciano said the current cyclone dropped 24 millibars in a 24-hour period.
While the storm is expected to continue producing high winds and blizzard conditions around the Great Lakes into Monday night, it will then “direct frigid air in its wake through the Midwest and Northeast and even bring some chills to the south-central and southeastern United States in the week ahead,” AccuWeather reported. It said even the South should expect a wintry temperature shock this week as people are returning home from Christmas holiday celebrations and planning New Year festivities.