What. A. Storm! The buzz words of Bombogenesis and Bomb Cyclone were thrown out for this one, and this powerhouse storm clearly lived up to it’s expectations. The term bomb or bombogenesis is not new, in fact, it’s in academic literature dating as far back as 1980, it just seemed to catch fire with social media on this storm, and grabbed quite a few headlines.
Bombogensis or a storm bombing out, just means an area of low pressure with see a 24mb pressure drop, or greater, within 24hrs. This storm dropped and incredible 59mb in 24hr! That rivals the 1989 storm that dropped 60mb in 24hrs, although, that storm was farther out to sea. Below is a graphic the National Weather Service put together with a few more facts.
Of course, with a powerhouse storm passing so close to us, high winds and heavy snow was an issue. Many towns and cities reported 12-17″ of snow and wind gusts reached hurricane force across the Cape and Islands!
A snowstorm that dumps 12-17″ of snow is big, but it the grand scheme of things, not all that uncommon around here. What was remarkable, and will be most memorable about this storm, was the fact that the storm surge jumped up at an astronomical high tide, causing major coastal flooding including in Boston. It was high enough to challenge the high level water mark of the Blizzard of ’78! Although, despite the widespread inundation, the coastal damage won’t be as much as ’78 thanks to it being 1 high tide this go around vs. 4 high tides in ’78 that saw major coastal flooding. Also, wave action wasn’t as bad as in ’78. That blizzard 40 years ago had 12 foot waves crashing onshore too, which knocked some houses off their foundations and totally destroyed them.
Below is a graph showing the spike in ocean level in Boston. That 15 foot mark the red line hits is the combination of a 12.1 astronomical high tide and a 3 foot storm surge. If this storm surge hit at low tide or even an high tide that was astronomically lower, it wouldn’t have been nearly as big of an issue. We’ll wait for the National Weather Service and NOAA to confirm whether or not we broke a new record yesterday.
Aiding is the potential breaking of that high water mark of 1978 is the fact the sea level is generally several inches (about 3-5″) higher than it was in 1978. You can see the rate of change below of about 1 foot over 100 years.
Now we bring on the cold, and a lot of it. Temps today drop into the single digits and teens and stay there through the afternoon with wind chills below 0 as westerly winds gusts 30 to 40mph. The cold gets colder this weekend with highs only in the single digits tomorrow and record cold likely Sunday morning. Wind chills run -15 to -25 tonight and -25 to -35 Saturday night!
We do return to a pattern closer to the averages next week with 30s and 40s across the board!
Good luck with the clean-up and stay safe and stay warm this weekend!
@clamberton7 – twitter