'Bomb Cyclone' May Have Set Unofficial State Low Pressure In Colorado
DENVER (CBS4) - The so called 'bomb cyclone' forecasters have been saying would bring a blizzard on Wednesday initially formed in southeast Colorado late Tuesday. It rapidly gained strength during the early Wednesday and was producing some of the lowest barometric readings ever observed in the area.
While there is no official state low barometric pressure reading for Colorado, it is believed that the 975.8 millibar reading measured in La Junta on March 13, 1973, is likely the state record. To put that into perspective we typically see pressure readings that low during Category 2 hurricanes.
I did find a lower one: 975.8 mb at La Junta, 13 March 1973, from this storm that looks a lot like the developing one. Daily Weather Map from NOAA library has a hand-written note at the top about a record for Nebraska! But the 1973 storm was a bit warmer and mostly had rain (2/3) pic.twitter.com/kovAsCrF2A
— Russ Schumacher (@russ_schumacher) March 12, 2019
As of 9 am Wednesday the pressure reading in La Junta was 971.7 millibars, which is lower than the prior observed low. It's also a drop of over 30 millibars in under 24 hours which more than exceeds the definition of a bomb cyclone. To be more technically correct, we refer to a storm rapidly gaining strength like this as explosive cyclogenesis.