Bomb Cyclone Hits Vancouver

Some fallen trees on the walking paths in Pacific Spirit Park

I have a good excuse for not being able to blog last night -- there was a bomb cyclone going through our area, which caused a blackout on various parts of Vancouver and Vancouver Island.

A bomb cyclone is not a made-up term, but one that weather forecasters have used for a while, but is rarely seen here. It's when masses of warm and cool air collide to create spiralling winds, and in this case they were swirling counter-clockwise, and there was also a rapid atmospheric pressure drop over 24 millibars (the unit to measure air pressure) in 24 hours. 

There were strong winds up to 70km/hr last night

Last night it formed around 400 km west of Tofino, BC and then went up Vancouver Island recording winds of up to 170km. It caused severe damage in terms of fallen trees and lots of electricity outages that are still ongoing as it is hard for BC Hydro crews to get to these areas (with the fallen trees on roads and highways).

Winds of up to 70km/h blew into Vancouver. Last night we had an early dinner in a restaurant, and when we came out just after 8pm there were strong gusts and some rain, but we didn't think too much of it. However, when we got closer to home we could see blocks of completely dark homes, and one of them was ours.

There wasn't much we could do except light up some candles, turn on flashlights and go to bed, around 10pm.

The power went back on at 1.15am... how do I know? Because a neighbour's house alarm went off, and was not immediately turned off... and then it went off again 30 minutes later. 

A lot of twigs and branches on the ground

Needless to say this morning I didn't get enough sleep!

I ventured out late morning to Pacific Spirit Park to survey the damage and while there were lots of twigs and branches on the ground, it was sad to see several trees had fallen overnight -- the ones along the walking paths. It will take the park rangers a few days to clear these routes.