Almost every spring, the Front Range gets hit with a nasty snowstorm or two. But a year ago, Colorado got hit with something truly out of the ordinary, even given the state’s notoriously wacky spring weather.
Last year, a slew of statewide weather records were broken by the so-called bomb cyclone, which blasted parts of Colorado with feet of snow and epic winds on March 13 and 14.
A powerful storm system, primarily fueled by moisture from the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico along with a huge clash of temperatures, delivered wind gusts up to 96 mph in Colorado Springs and 80 mph in Denver. That, in turn, led to nearly half a million Colorado customers without power, and all major interstates were shut down outside of Denver. Denver International Airport all but closed on March 13, with nearly 1400 flights canceled by the storm alone.
The bomb cyclone’s legacy won’t necessarily live in just its snow totals, though some parts of Colorado did see as much as 45 inches of snow from the storm. The storm’s sheer strength and strong winds combined to leave a lasting meteorological impression, along with a catchy phrase to describe this epic storm: the bomb cyclone.
On the morning of March 12, 2019, the barometric pressure at the Denver airport was approximately 1010 millibars. Twenty-four hours later, the pressure had dropped a whopping 30 millibars, easily clearing .
To be a bomb cyclone, the central pressure of a storm must drop by 24 millibars or more in 24 hours. In other words, it’s an unusually rapidly strengthening storm system. Storms of this magnitude rarely happen in Colorado.
On the morning of March 13, the barometric pressure in Lamar dropped down to 970.4 millibars, setting a new state record for the lowest recorded pressure level. The lower the pressure, in general, the stronger the overall storm.
But, the storm will ultimately be remembered more for its winds more than anything else. The 96-mph gust in Colorado Springs made it the city’s strongest wind gust ever recorded. Denver’s 80-mph wind during the storm made it the city’s strongest recorded gust since a June 2013 tornado directly hit the airport.
One Colorado state trooper was killed on Interstate 76 in the middle of the storm.
Snow-wise, Denver officially received only 7.1 inches of snow from the system, based on official observations at Denver International Airport. But, some parts of Colorado saw more than four feet worth of snowfall (Wolf Creek Pass saw 52 inches, the storm’s highest statewide total). In eastern Colorado, blizzard conditions whipped up snow drifts that piled up to four feet in a few locations.
The National Weather Service has .
The bomb cyclone came in as The Post’s top weather event of 2019 and Denver’s most powerful March snowstorm on record as well. And it all took place a year ago today.
