Bomb cyclones have been appearing in the news a lot lately, and they make you imagine some kind of scary storm that is coming to get you. You know a cyclone is terrible, but this is a bomb cyclone, so it must be even worse.
To get the actual facts and to better understand what a bomb cyclone is, just keep reading.
1. Is a bomb cyclone a real cyclone?
Cyclone is a term for types of storms in the South Pacific or the Indian Ocean. A bomb cyclone could result in a real cyclone, but that isn’t required.
2. Is a bomb cyclone a hurricane?
A hurricane is a type of storm in the northern hemisphere, and while a bomb cyclone could progress into a hurricane, it’s doesn’t have to. Also, the term bomb cyclone was initially coined in the southern hemisphere but is now used interchangeably between hemispheres to refer to the same storm pattern.
3. What is a bomb cyclone?
A bomb cyclone is a storm that intensifies rapidly and is most often a winter storm that starts over water. The term doesn’t mean it turns into a real cyclone or hurricane. It also doesn’t mean it will be a significant threat to you outside of a regular storm.
4. Why is this type of storm called a bomb cyclone?
In the ’40s, meteorologists started referring to storms that formed rapidly over seas as bombs because they “exploded” suddenly, unlike they had seen before over land.
It’s a little less clear about who or where the full bomb cyclone term started and why it has become the most common name for this type of event. However, the name is certainly more exciting for news sites and channels to talk about, so that may factor into it.
5. Are there other names a bomb cyclone could be called?
The official term for this type of event is explosive cyclogenesis. Some other common names aside from bomb cyclone are weather bomb, bombogenesis, meteorological bomb, explosive development.
You can decide which you prefer, but most people enjoy talking about bomb cyclones to add some extra excitement to the event.
6. What causes a bomb cyclone?
In technical terms, a bomb cyclone happens when a low-pressure system’s central pressure falls 24 millibars in 24 hours or less.
Generally, this is how most storms would form, but it’s the speed that it happens that we term it a bomb cyclone because it explodes out of nowhere.
7. What impact could a bomb cyclone have?
Because a bomb cyclone is more about how a storm forms, it’s entirely dependent on how much further it escalates. There could be no impact, or if it reaches land and has been progressed into or close to a hurricane, you could see a significant effect. Possibilities would be infrastructure damage, power outages, and of course, don’t be outside when this type of event hits land.
8. How should I prepare for a bomb cyclone?
Be prepared for any type of event that could cause power outages. Make sure you have canned food, water, batteries, torches, and anything else you might critically need when you can’t go to stores for up to three days.
9. How common are bomb cyclones?
Bomb cyclones are more common than you’d expect because it’s just a storm, and the type of storm happens during a time of year when there are a lot of storms raging.
It’s not a once-in-a-lifetime event, and it depends on if the news outlets pick up and start distributing that a particular storm is a bomb cyclone.
10. When is a bomb cyclone most likely to occur?
When winter conditions are prevalent but not exclusive, such as late autumn to early spring in the US.
11. What regions are most likely to see bomb cyclones?
While bomb cyclones can occur over the land, they most often form over water, so the western and eastern coasts of the US see a high number of them each year.
12. Are there any benefits to a bomb cyclone?
You would generally think not, but in hard-hit forest fire areas such as California, a bomb cyclone has been welcomed to extinguish some of the fires still ranging at certain times of the year.
A storm is never generally welcomed, but in the case of stopping a fire, most people accept it.
13. How long do bomb cyclones last?
A bomb cyclone is how a storm has formed, but then it’s up to the storm that determines how long it will last. If there is a lack of moisture and the terrain is not suitable to progress, it will putter out.
However, a bomb cyclone will last as long as another storm would in your general area.
14. How many bomb cyclones happen every year?
There are around 40-50 bomb cyclones each year in the northern hemisphere.
15. Are bomb cyclones increasing?
There is no research to suggest that there are more bomb cyclones than before or that they are becoming stronger in any way. The term was only introduced around the 1980s and has somewhat recently made it into the mainstream.
So you may not have heard of them before, but they have been happening before. In the past, you just called bomb cyclones storms.
16. What contributes to bomb cyclones?
A warm air mass colliding with a cold air mass with a lot of moisture creates a bomb cyclone. Which is why you want cold weather but not freezing weather, and you generally want the ocean or sea to help it.
17. Are humans helping to cause bomb cyclones?
Humans can contribute to many things, including earthquakes. However, we don’t seem to be doing anything that causes bomb cyclones to appear or be worse in any way.
18. Can bomb cyclones cause earthquakes?
Bomb cyclones do not cause earthquakes. However, seismic monitoring tools can pick them up, and scientists can use bomb cyclones to better understand the inner structure of our earth by knowing this information, which may improve our understanding of how and when earthquakes will happen.
19. Can animals predict bomb cyclones?
Animals are better able to pick up atmospheric pressure changes. However, it’s unknown due to the speed of bomb cyclones if your back cat could predict or sense a bomb cyclone-style storm before you were aware of it as well.
20. Is there anything we can do to lessen bomb cyclones?
Because humans don’t contribute to bomb cyclones, there is also not a lot we can do. They are simply part of our world. Some people have wondered could we bomb storms or hurricanes to disperse them, but this would seem extreme, and the power of the bomb we would need would be too immense.
Something to note, if you nuked a hurricane and it failed to disperse, you would then have a radioactive hurricane rampaging around the area.
Final Thoughts
There you have it, bomb cyclones are just storms that form in a certain way, and it depends on other factors if the storm will be bad or just disappear. However, if you see the term in the news, you know your area will have a good size storm, and you should prepare to stay inside for a day or two.
