(OPINION) We are only at the very beginning of winter, and we are already being hit by a storm that will bring “the coldest air in decades” to many parts of the country. In fact, there will be some areas where wind chill temperatures drop so low that it will literally be “life-threatening” to be outside.
Needless to say, we could really use some of that “global warming” they keep talking about right now, because conditions are going to be bitterly cold all over the U.S. this week. For years, I have been warning that global weather patterns are starting to go completely nuts, and this winter is certainly off to an extremely bizarre beginning. If you live in a place that will get hit really hard this week, please be safe.
According to the Weather Channel, the giant storm that has begun to sweep across the nation is known as “Winter Storm Elliott”, and it could “become a bomb cyclone over the Great Lakes later this week”… A major storm – named Winter Storm Elliott by The Weather Channel – could become a bomb cyclone over the Great Lakes later this week and bring blizzard conditions to parts of the Midwest as well as high winds to the East Coast, snarling travel in the days leading up to the Christmas holiday weekend.
This developing storm will also usher in bitterly cold air to much of the nation as far south as Texas, the Gulf Coast and Florida. So exactly what is a “bomb cyclone”? Well, normally a storm is considered to have undergone bombogenesis “if its minimum surface pressure drops by at least 24 millibars in 24 hours or less”…
As a rule of thumb, meteorologists refer to a strengthening low as “bombing out” or undergoing bombogenesis if its minimum surface pressure drops by at least 24 millibars in 24 hours or less, though that criteria also depends on a storm’s latitude. Meteorologists frequently discuss pressure in terms of millibars, rather than inches of mercury.
The reason this all matters beyond just a weather geeky statistic is the lower the pressure in a storm, the more intense it is. And the greater difference in pressure over an area, the stronger the winds. Of course, we have seen “bomb cyclones” before, but this one is truly a monster.
If you can believe it, this storm will cover nearly the entire country east of the Rocky Mountains later this week. I have never seen anything quite like this. This storm will bring tremendous amounts of snow to many areas, but the main threat that it poses are the extremely cold temperatures that it will bring. According to AccuWeather, some parts of the nation will shortly be experiencing “the coldest air in decades”…(READ MORE)
