Bomb Cyclone Knocks out Power to Thousands on the SouthCoast

The SouthCoast was hit by a bomb cyclone overnight that has left thousands without power this morning.

The Tri-Town was hit the hardest here on the SouthCoast with nearly 50 percent of Marion, Mattapoisett and Rochester waking up to no power this morning. Thirty percent of Carver is out. The Cape also saw some significant outages with Bourne, Barnstable and Falmouth all losing between 20-25 percent of their power supply, and nearly all of Martha's Vineyard was in darkness overnight. Almost all homes in New Bedford and Fall River weathered the storm without losing power. A modest three percent of Dartmouth and Fairhaven lost power.

Chelsea Priest told us this morning that she expects wind gusts to remain strong throughout the day with potential gusts up to 40 to 50 miles per hour. This will make it more difficult for Eversource and National Grid work crews to conduct repairs with their bucket trucks. Work crews also need to clear any downed trees and limbs that may have taken down power lines. The wind advisory will remain in place until 6 p.m. tonight.

So what exactly is a bomb cyclone? Chelsea tells us that it's a technical term for "when a low-pressure system drops 24 millibars in less than 24 hours." So what exactly does that mean?

"It's a rapidly strengthening low-pressure system. It strengthens really fast, and when it strengthens that fast we see really windy conditions," she said. "Then, in the wintertime, it leads to very heavy precipitation which leads to very heavy snowfall."

You can check out Eversource's real-time outage map by clicking the blue button below.