Preparing for the bomb cyclone
Since all the TV weather folk are hyperventilating about the “bomb cyclone” that is expected to throw a huge swath of the country into the deep freeze – or worse – in the next 24 hours, I figured this would be a good opportunity for a quick Word of the Day (to give you something to do while you’re busy freezing to death or waiting for the power to go out…or come back on).
The Word of the Day is “bomb cyclone.” (Yes, I know that’s two words. Humor me.) It appears the term was coined, or at least popularized, in 1980 by MIT professor Fred Sanders and his colleague John Gyakum. They wrote a research paper that used the catchy (and scary) term for a meteorological phenomenon known as “bombogenesis,” sometimes also known as “explosive cyclogenesis.”
Basically, it all refers to a very rapid decrease in air pressure at the center of a storm (a decrease of at least 24 millibars within 24 hours, for all you weather geeks). When the pressure drops like that, meteorologists say the rapidly intensifying storm “bombs out.” And the results can be explosive, indeed, including heavy snow, fierce winds, power outages, torrential rain and flooding. The bomb cyclone can also bring with it dramatic drops in temperature – 40 or 50 degrees in a matter of hours. Kaboom!
Take it seriously and be prepared to hunker down for a while. They don’t call it a bomb for nothing!
