The massive winter storm bearing down on the central United States is threatening to rapidly strengthen into what meteorologists call a bomb cyclone that will dump blinding snow on Chicago, throw holiday travel into chaos and send an arctic blast as far south as Texas.
Wind chill watches and warnings stretch from Montana to Alabama, and Chicago could get 8 inches of snow driven by 55-mph winds, setting up a blizzard there and across the region, the National Weather Service said. The wild weather in one of the largest U.S. air hubs will almost certainly delay and cancel flights across the country. The cold will then push east, bringing heavy snow to the eastern shores of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. It also poses risks to energy infrastructure and crops.
A storm undergoes bombogenesis and becomes a bomb cyclone when its central pressure, a measure of its strength, plunges 24 millibars in 24 hours. The conditions are ripe for this system to fit that bill, said Tom Kines, a meteorologist for AccuWeather Inc.
