A Strong Cyclone is Developing Off the Northwest Coast

It is not as powerful as the "bomb cyclone" of last November, but it is impressive for this time of the year.   

Our first significant Pacific cyclone of the season.

The sea level pressure forecast for 5 PM today (Monday) shows the low center clearly, with a respectable central pressure of 980 hPa 

And you see the clouds starting to swirl around the low in the infrared satellite imagery.

The latest UW WRF forecasts are in....so let me show you what should happen.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) morning at 11 AM, the deepening low will be west of Vancouver Island, with an intense pressure difference to the south of the low...which means strong winds.    A strong front, with substantial pressure differences and winds, will be along our coast.

This low will not be in a hurry to leave us and is nearly stationary at 11 PM Tuesday.

Winds will get quite gusty late tomorrow afternoon and during the evening.  According to Seattle WindWatch, winds will gust to about 30 mph over Seattle later on Tuesday.

And the plot of predicted wind gusts at 8 PM Tuesday shows very strong winds (40-50 kt) over Northwest Washington and along the coast.   This early in the fall, you can expect some branches down and scattered power outages.

Finally, this offshore low should produce heavy rain over the Olympics and southwest BC, with loads of rain offshore.   The fire season west of the Cascade crest will be over.  And the windfires east of the Cascades will rapidly fade.