A bomb cyclone slammed into the Pacific Northwest overnight with hurricane-force winds, downing trees, knocking out power for hundreds of thousands of people and leaving at least two people dead.
ABC News reported that a woman was killed on Tuesday when a tree fell into a home in Bellevue, Wash., while she was in the shower. Another woman was killed in Lynnwood, Wash., on Tuesday night when a tree fell on a homeless encampment, officials there say.
According to PowerOutage.us, nearly 500,000 customers were without power in Washington state early Wednesday afternoon.
The National Weather Service said winds of up to 101 mph were recorded off the coast of British Columbia, with gusts up to 77 mph logged in inland Washington.
‘Atmospheric river’ on West Coast
While the high winds were expected to subside, a subsequent “atmospheric river event” is expected to bring heavy rain and snow to much of northern California, Oregon, and Washington over multiple days.
“When combined with heavy snowfall at the higher elevations, blizzard conditions are in the forecast throughout the Washington Cascades,” the weather service said.
The bomb cyclone was one of two storm systems affecting a large swath of the United States as millions of Americans are preparing to travel next week for the Thanksgiving holiday.
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Near-blizzard conditions in the Plains
A second system — which brought severe thunderstorms to the central and southern Plains on Monday and triggered a tornado in Oklahoma — will collide with arctic air as it moves north, causing widespread snow to develop across the Dakotas, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Heavy snow and gusty winds will create near-blizzard conditions across the northern Plains on Wednesday, the weather service said, with the greatest snowfall amounts forecast across North Dakota, eastern South Dakota and northwest Minnesota.
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Read more from Fox Weather: Snow, rain to slam U.S. as winter storms ramp up ahead of Thanksgiving travel
Snow from the mid-Atlantic to Northeast
Separately, an upper-level low-pressure system was forecast to develop above the Great Lakes later this week, resulting in cooler temperatures, cold rain from the Ohio Valley to the East Coast and accumulating snow for the central Appalachians, the weather service said.
Winter weather alerts have been issued from the mid-Atlantic to the Northeast, where up to a foot of snow is possible on Thursday and Friday, especially in the higher elevations of West Virginia and Maryland.
While most people in the northeast and New England will see rain, at least four inches of snow is expected to fall across portions of northeast Pennsylvania and New York’s Catskill mountains through the end of the week, the weather service said.
What about Thanksgiving?
Weather service forecasters have yet to issue forecasts beyond seven days, but the U.S. Climate Prediction Center’s 6-to-10-day outlook suggests above-average chances for rain in the Pacific Northwest, upper Midwest and Great Lakes during the early part of next week.
Nearly 80 million people are expected to travel more than 50 miles for Thanksgiving next week, according to AAA, with Tuesday and Wednesday expected to be the busiest times on the roads.
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Read more from NBC News: Almost 80 million expected to travel over Thanksgiving in record-breaking getaway
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