President Joe Biden on Friday issued an alert. He said, “It’s dangerous and threatening, it’s really very serious weather and it goes from Oklahoma all the way to Wyoming and Maine. ... So I encourage everyone to please heed local warnings". "This is not like a snow day when you were a kid," President Joe Biden told reporters. "This is serious stuff."
Blinding whiteouts and hazardous road conditions were already spreading, even as 100 million people were expected to take to the roads, according to the American Automobile Association.
What is a Bomb cyclone?
A bomb cyclone is a mid-latitude storm in which the central pressure drops fast at one millibar per hour for at least 24 hours. However, the millibar readings can change based on where the storm is forming. Air pressure is the measurement of the force exerted by the weight of the atmosphere. The lower this pressure, the stronger is the storm.
The National Weather Service in the US has predicted that the temperature may drop by more than 11 degrees Celsius in just a few hours. Meanwhile, the air pressure is predicted to drop from 1003 millibars to 968 millibars.
How is a Bomb cyclone formed?
A bomb cyclone is formed when the air of different air masses (cold, dry) comes together. As the warm air rises, it creates a cloud system lowering air pressure and forming into a storm circulating counterclockwise around the low-pressure area.
The bomb cyclone will be characterised by cold winds, which are also expected to pick up, and wind chill temperatures could drop to dangerous lows far below zero — enough to cause frostbite within minutes. The weather system is also expected to send a snowstorm through the Midwest near the end of the week.
US affected by Bomb cyclone
The National Weather Service warned snow squalls -- bursts of snow lasting an hour or two -- had already happened or were expected from the Central Plains to the mid-Atlantic and Northeast.
The dangerous storm is expected to hit everyone east of the Rockies — around two-thirds of the country. Though much of the West Coast will be shielded from the cold, the Arctic front is expected to pass east and south all the way through Florida. Meanwhile, blizzard conditions aren’t expected to hit the East Coast. Some spots around the Great Lakes may see upwards of a foot of snow by Friday, the National Weather Service predicted.
This weather system is expected to bring some major weather whiplash.
Experts predict that shortly after Christmas, temperatures will start to warm up again, moving from west to east. They are likely to remain near normal through the end of the year in most of the US.
