Bomb cyclone spawns blizzard, tornadoes, rare seiche from Midwest to Northeast
An intense storm system swept through the Midwest and Northeast U.S., causing blizzard conditions, tornadoes and a rare seiche.
Dangerous, wind-driven snow swept from the Upper Midwest across the Great Lakes, making the last Monday of 2025 a memorable one.
A rapidly strengthening storm this past weekend that ultimately became a bomb cyclone Monday unleashed blizzard conditions, tornadoes and a rare surge of water across the Great Lakes and Midwest.
Storm causes blizzard conditions with 1-2 feet of snow
Between Sunday and Monday, blizzard conditions blasted the Michigan shoreline, while high winds encased trees and lighthouses in ice.
The maximum snowfall report was 27.5 inches at Mt. Arvon, Michigan. Photos after the storm showed that Marquette, Michigan, was buried by nearly 2 feet of snow.
The heavy lake-effect snow wasn't limited to Michigan. A total of 20 inches fell at Gile, Wisconsin, and 26 inches fell at Lysander, New York. The 24.2 inches that fell at Syracuse, New York, on Tuesday broke the daily record for Dec. 30 of 18.6 inches set in 1997, and became the second-snowiest day in the city's history.
70 mph winds knock out power
The storm met the definition of a "bomb cyclone," with the central pressure reported by NOAA dropping from 29.62 inches of mercury (1003 mb) Sunday morning to 28.88 inches (978 mb) Monday morning.
A bomb cyclone is defined as a low pressure that drops 0.71 of an inch of mercury (24 mb) or more over a 24-hour period.
High wind and wind damage reports (purple) during the last 48 hours. Tornado reports are shown in red.
Winds gusted to 70 mph at Minneapolis Shoal on northern Lake Michigan, 72 mph at Sault Ste. Marie on eastern Lake Superior, and 72 mph at a sensor on the Buffalo Skyway at the eastern tip of Lake Erie. Winds at the Buffalo airport gusted to 79 mph. That station's all-time high wind gust record is 82 mph.
Winds were particularly high on mountaintops, with 116 mph recorded at Mt. Washington, New Hampshire, on Tuesday and 94 mph clocked at Grandfather Mountain, North Carolina, on Monday.
Over 100,000 customers in the Great Lakes and Northeast were without power Monday afternoon, with another 100,000 in New York and Pennsylvania.
Tornadoes, severe weather slam southern side of storm
The southern end of the storm spawned severe thunderstorms and tornadoes from Tennessee to Ohio, which were responsible for dozens of reports of downed trees and power lines. As the storm moved into the Northeast, that number climbed to a total of 200 wind damage reports.
The National Weather Service (NWS) office in Chicago, Illinois, confirmed five tornadoes in its warning area on Sunday, including two twisters that ranked EF1 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale. In Haubstadt, Indiana, another EF1 tornado was confirmed by the NWS office in Paducah.
Winds also gusted to 70 mph at a weather station in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Flash freeze, snow, ice storm cause travel havoc
Multiple pileups were reported on snow-slicked roads, according to CNN, including 20 vehicles on I-75 in Detroit late Monday morning, and 14 vehicles crashed on I-35 in north-central Iowa Sunday. The location was the same for an earlier crash that killed one person Sunday.
Minnesota state patrol reported "hundreds" of crashes throughout the weekend. On I-80 in Clarion County, Pennsylvania, two dozen vehicles were involved in a pileup.
A pileup occurred Monday on I-75 near Detroit. (Facebook/@metrodetroitnews)
Temperatures plummeted from the Plains to the East Coast as the storm's cold front plowed through. Some of the slick roads were caused by a "flash freeze," where temperatures dropped suddenly, causing roads to ice up. In Memphis, Tennessee, the thermometer plunged 15 degrees F, from 72 to 55 degrees, in 8 minutes.
In Saint Louis, the high temperature Sunday at 3 p.m. was 77 degrees, but it dropped to 22 degrees at midnight, 19 degrees by 3 a.m. Monday, bottoming out at 15 at 8 a.m. The readings of 77 and 22 at St. Louis represented the largest calendar-day high and low difference for the month of December.
Towering waves were caught crashing onto the shores of St. Joseph, Michigan, during a winter storm on Dec. 29. The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning at the time of this video.
Temperatures on Monday afternoon at 3 p.m. in North Carolina ranged from 27 at Boone, where the cold front had passed, to 72 at Kinston, on the eastern side of the front.
In New England, freezing rain iced up roads on Monday afternoon. A total of 0.55 of an inch of freezing rain coated Springfield, New Hampshire, 0.5 of an inch accumulated at Newark, Vermont, and 0.41 of an inch was reported at Fryeburg, Maine.
More than 9,000 flights were delayed and 850 were canceled Monday as record high numbers of holiday travelers attempted to get home after Christmas.
Big waves and a seiche on Lake Erie
Waves were forecast to be above 30 feet on Lake Superior, but official measurements of winter waves are not available, as the buoys were recovered for winter before the storm. Waves up to 16 feet were reported on Lake Ontario near Oswego, New York.
People explored the dry lake bed on Dec. 29, from Oregon, Ohio, during a natural phenomenon known as a “seiche” that occurred on Lake Erie. AccuWeather’s Geoff Cornish explains what happened.
On Lake Erie, a rare "seiche," or sloshing of water from one side of the lake to another, occurred.
On Monday afternoon, fierce west winds caused water levels at Toledo, Ohio, to fall to nearly 7 feet below normal, while levels at Buffalo, New York, increased by the same amount as the entire volume of the lake was displaced eastward. At Maumee Bay State Park in Oregon, Ohio, more than 650 feet of lakebed was exposed as the waters receded.
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