Safety and Preparedness

6 Images That Show How the Latest 'Bomb Cyclone', Winter Storm Ulmer, Came to Be

Pressure change over three hours Wednesday morning.

At a Glance

Winter Storm Ulmer's low-pressure system has intensified in the Plains.
These weather images show how the storm became so strong.

Meteorologists are often fascinated by eye-popping weather imagery from extreme weather events, and Winter Storm Ulmer, dubbed the 'bomb cyclone' by some, is no different.

Ulmer's low-pressure system has become unusually intense for a storm system in the Plains. It's a rare example of bombogenesis for that region of the country, meaning the atmospheric pressure dropped 24 millibars or more in 24 hours.

The image above shows the rapidly-falling atmospheric pressure over the course of three hours in the central Plains on Wednesday morning. This largest pressure falls, shown in light red, are in eastern Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska.

You can also see the pressure drop in the animation below, which has an increasing number of isobars in the central Plains from late Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. Isobars are lines of constant pressure near the Earth's surface.

The more isobars there are around a center of low pressure, which in this case is located over Colorado, the stronger the storm's intensity and the windier it will become.

This loop shows the storm using visible satellite imagery on Wednesday morning, or how it would generally appear when viewing it from space with the naked eye.

Ulmer has a classic comma-shaped appearance typically seen in satellite imagery when powerful low-pressure systems develop.

Next is a water vapor satellite image of the storm swirling in the Plains Wednesday morning.

You can see dry air in the mid-levels of the atmosphere, denoted by orange and red shadings, punching in behind and wrapping into the area of low pressure, which is located in eastern Colorado. This is commonly seen when strong jet-stream winds are helping to intensify a storm system.

On the wet, west side of Ulmer's circulation, Denver saw more moisture in its atmosphere over the city that it has ever had from late November into late March dating back to 1998.

You can see the aforementioned strong jet-stream winds in the analysis below from Wednesday morning.

The jet stream's strong winds are shown in orange and red across the Southwest and southern Plains, and are helping to intensify the storm.

We also saw very cold temperatures being sucked into Ulmer from far northern Canada.

While no records were set for cold temperatures, the cold air is easily seen enwrapped into Ulmer's circulation over the central Plains while warm air from the Gulf of Mexico is seen surging into the Midwest and counter-clockwise around Ulmer's coldest air in the Rockies.