Satellite Images Show Scale of 'Bomb Cyclone' Hitting US West Coast

A satellite image of the "bomb cyclone" which has hit the northwest U.S. lays bare the scale of the deadly storm.

The storm, which hit on Tuesday, has killed at least one person in Washington while wreaking havoc and destruction in parts of California, Oregon and Nevada.

NASA Worldview's dramatic satellite images show the storm in a well-defined swirling system along the Pacific coast.

There is a thick mass of dense cloud cover surrounding the cyclone's center, which is typical of a bomb cyclone, forming as the storm intensifies.

Newsweek has contacted the National Weather Service (NWS) for comment.

A NASA Worldview sattelite image showing the "bomb cyclone" hitting the U.S. West Coast. NASA Worldview

The NWS in Seattle issued high wind warnings on Tuesday extending into the early hours of Wednesday as gale-force winds with gusts over 65 miles per hour downed trees and toppled power lines across the region.

NWS Seattle reported that the maximum wind speeds were reported in Canadian waters off the Vancouver Islands, where speeds eclipsed 100 miles an hour at 6 p.m. PT on Tuesday.

The victim who died in Washington was a woman in her 50s who was killed after a large tree fell on a homeless encampment in the city of Lynnwood on Tuesday night, South County Fire said on X.

This is the only known person to have died in the storm, although others have been injured, according to The Associated Press.

As of Wednesday morning, 563,152 houses in Washington State were without power, according to poweroutage.us, along with 16,508 houses in California and 15,071 houses in Nevada.

"Severe winds from this evening's bomb cyclone ripped through western Washington, causing a mass outage event throughout most of our service area, with the biggest impact in King County," Puget Sound Energy (PSE), Washington state's largest energy utility, said on X in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

The company's website and power outage map had been experiencing issues throughout Tuesday evening, though these have since been resolved.

"We are hearing reports of extensive numbers of downed lines and are urging our customers to never touch or go within 30 feet of downed power lines because they might be energized," PSE said, thanking customers for their patience.

What Is a Bomb Cyclone?

A "bomb cyclone" refers to a storm that rapidly intensifies and strengthens over a 24-hour period.

To be classified as a "bomb cyclone," the storm has to have undergone "bombogenesis," which is when the storm's center pressure drops by a certain number of millibars in that 24-hour period.

At 60 degrees latitude, this threshold is a drop of at least 24 millibars, and at the latitude of New York City, the required pressure drop is about 17.8 millibars, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.