January 2018 Starts with a “Bomb” Cyclone!

January 2018 began with an extreme weather event of a “bomb” cyclone dumping huge snow amounts. Over a foot was observed in parts of New England, and also right up to the beach in Delaware and New Jersey!The storm also brought with it hurricane force winds (74+mph) and damaging coastal flooding and an icy storm surge for portions of New Jersey and Massachusetts. 

The center pressure of this blizzard “bombed” out and got down to 951 millibars. To put into perspective, that’s equivalent to a category 3 hurricane. It shows Shows you how powerful this system got overnight as it heads towards New England. Scientifically speaking we refer to a storm as a “bomb” cyclone when a storm undergoes cyclogenesis or “bombgenesis” and the pressure falls  at least 24mb in a 24 hour time period.

So let’s  recap this storm from start to finish. The snow started falling across parts of northern Florida on January 3rd. Some places across northeast FL picked up a few inches. Here is some video taken from near Tallahassee, FL showing the freezing rain and the hazardous weather conditions.

The snow and ice continued up into southeast into places like Savannah, GA and Flourence, SC. Noumerous accidents occured that emergency crews responded to. 

The storm quickly races north “bombing” out as is approached the New England coastline. As it made its way up it continued to dump snow across eastern North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland. It peaked overnight on January 4th before exiting the northeast on the 5th.  Sadly at least 11 people were killed as a result of this winter storm. Another storm looms on the horizion for this coming weekend across parts of the interior northeast. Keep checking back with us for more updates. Joseph Pisani may be taking a trip north to see the impacts and document this next storm. Stay tuned! 

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