WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 (Xinhua) -- Powerful coastal storm rapidly intensified as a "bomb cyclone" downed numerous trees and utility lines and knocked out power for tens of thousands of residents across the U.S. Northeast on Thursday, local media reported.
"Over 580k customers are without power in the North East USA, Due to a powerful storm causing high winds. With 213k out in #Massachusetts, 178k out in #Maine, 44k out in #NewHampshire," the PowerOutage.us said on social media.
"It was a wild night with wind gusts up to 90 mph in Provincetown," the National Weather Service's Boston office tweeted.
Boston smashed its record low barometric pressure for October, reaching 975.3 millibars after falling 35 in 12 hours. Wind gusts reached 70 mph at Boston Logan, just short of hurricane status. Some areas of the state were drenched with up to 4 inches of rain in two hours, according to a USA Today report.
In New York, high winds at La Guardia Airport on Thursday caused some arriving flights to be delayed for an average of 1 hour and 47 minutes, the FAA said.
Three people died and eight were injured when a van crashed late Wednesday in Chester County, Pennsylvania, state police said. The cause of the accident remains under investigation. However, AccuWeather meteorologists said rainy weather could be to blame.
"At the time of the crash, heavy rain was falling across the area and could have been a factor," AccuWeather Meteorologist Jake Sojda said.
A bomb cyclone, aka "explosive cyclogenesis," occurs when the barometric pressure falls at least 24 millibars, or 0.71 inches, within 24 hours. The faster and steeper the drop, known as bombogenesis, the more intense the storm.
