‘Bomb cyclone’ kills one, knocks out power to 600,000+ in Washington state

A powerful storm known as a “bomb cyclone” hit the Pacific Northwest Tuesday night, killing one person in Washington state and at one point leaving more than 600,000 homes without power.

A bomb cyclone – or what meteorologists call bombogenesis – is a rapid intensification of a cyclone in a short period of time.

Falling trees struck homes and littered roads across the northwest portion of the Evergreen State, the result of the storm’s rain and high winds, with gusts of more than 70 mph recorded. According to the National Weather Service in Seattle, gusts of 101 mph were reported off the coast of Vancouver Island.

At least one person was reported dead due to the storm. In Lynwood, a woman died Tuesday night when a large tree fell on a homeless encampment, South County Fire reported on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Early Wednesday, more than 500,000 homes in Washington were reported to be without power, per PowerOutage.us.

“As of 5:30 a.m., we have 416,488 customers without power,” Puget Sound Energy said on its website.

The energy utility company provides electricity to more than 1.2 million people in the Puget Sound.

“Our focus today is on critical infrastructure and public safety, as PSE has been fielding many 911 calls for safety/emergency needs. With daylight approaching, crews will continue assessing more of the overall damage to the region and provide restoration updates as information becomes available,” PSE said.

“We anticipate a multiple day outage and encourage customers with critical needs to make alternate plans as we work to assess the situation and restore power."

As of Wednesday morning, Seattle City Light reported more than 44,000 power outages. Snohomish PUD reported more than 74,000 outages.

This is one of the strongest storms on record for the northeast Pacific,” weather.com digital meteorologist Chris Dolce told The Weather Channel. “The storm’s pressure dropped to an estimated 942 millibars, putting it on par with an October 2021 storm clocking the lowest pressure in about 50 years of recorded storms in the region.”

A millibar is a unit of measurement for atmospheric pressure.

A bomb cyclone occurs when the central pressure of a low-pressure system falls at least 24 millibars within 24 hours, rapidly increasing the intensity and destructive power of the storm.