By Christine Clarridge Seattle Times staff reporter
An especially strong jet stream over the Pacific Ocean is spinning off a series of five or six weather systems, including a massive “bomb cyclone” that’s expected to arrive to the Seattle area Friday. With it, the system is expected to bring heavy rain and gusty 40 mph winds, according to local weather experts.
“What is remarkable is how big it is in scale, how deep the center is and the speed with which it goes from an open wave to a super intense low pressure system,” said Joe Boomgard-Zagrodnik, an agricultural meteorologist for Washington State University. “Meaning it will seem to explode out of nowhere.”
This incoming “massive system” has the classic comma shape of a cyclone, a very low pressure middle and “frontal bands spiraling out hundreds of miles from the center,” he said.
As with most extreme weather events in the Pacific Northwest, he explained on his blog The Convergence Zone, this series was set off in the tropics. This series began with the relatively benign storm Namtheun that is “helping supercharge what was already an impressive jet stream.”
The cyclones, which have a center of low pressure, spin off from the jet stream, then deepen and eventually decay, he said.
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