The November 2024 bomb cyclone

What happened

The low strengthened fast as it moved over the waters off Washington on the evening of November 19, 2024. Storms whose pressure drops that quickly are often called bomb cyclones. What set this one apart in the Seattle office’s write-up was direction: the damaging gusts around Puget Sound came from the east, not the usual south or southwest.

Measured gusts were not extreme by coastal standards: 59 mph at Sea-Tac Airport and at Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, 61 mph at Port Townsend. Most of the Seattle office’s reports are damage reports with estimated gusts near 50 knots, running from Mount Vernon and Sudden Valley in the north to Kirkland, north Seattle and Lynnwood, and east to Sultan, Monroe and Lake Stevens.

The same low reached Oregon later that evening. The Yaquina Bay Bridge sensor on the central coast gusted to 73 mph, south coast stations in Curry and Coos counties ran from 74 to 82 mph, and the Blue Mountain foothills peaked at 85 mph near Mission, where a wind-related crash closed part of I-84. The system also brought blizzard conditions to Snoqualmie Pass, which NOAA filed as a blizzard report rather than a wind report.

The storm in NOAA’s numbers

NOAA’s Storm Events Database files this storm as 6 episodes from the National Weather Service offices in Medford (MFR), Pendleton (PDT), Portland (PQR) and Seattle (SEW), dated November 19, 2024. Counting the six tree-relevant report types (high wind, strong wind, thunderstorm wind, ice storm, winter storm and heavy snow), the episodes hold 22 reports: 22 high wind (6 in Oregon; 16 in Washington). The same episodes hold 1 other report (blizzard 1), which are not counted in that total. The highest gust among the wind reports is 74 knots (about 85 mph), measured, in NOAA’s Foothills of the Northern Blue Mountains of Oregon forecast zone in Oregon. Of the counted reports, 11 mention trees in the narrative.

A report is one entry per forecast zone or county per event, so one storm crossing many zones produces many reports. Gusts are in knots as NOAA records them (1 kt is about 1.15 mph).

Affected counties

23 counties have at least one counted report (10 in Oregon; 13 in Washington). The most reports touched King County, WA (7), Snohomish County, WA (5) and Island County, WA (3). Most wind, ice and snow reports are filed by forecast zone, and a zone report is assigned here to every county that zone covers, so a county’s number is the reports that touched it, not separate incidents.

Damage, deaths and injuries

NOAA’s property damage field is blank or zero on every report in these episodes. The event records list 2 deaths (2 direct, 0 indirect) and 0 injuries across these episodes. NOAA’s fatality file gives a location for each death it holds: “Permanent Home” 1; “Under Tree” 1.

NOAA left the property damage field blank or at zero on every report in this storm, so “none entered” here means no estimate was filed, not that nothing was damaged; the narratives describe damaged homes, cars and power poles and long outages. Of the two deaths, both direct, NOAA’s fatality file codes one as “Under Tree” (the tent in Lynnwood) and one as “Permanent Home” (the house near Kirkland).

What it meant for trees

11 of the 22 reports mention trees, and every one of them comes from the Puget Sound lowlands. They describe limbs up to 3 inches thick snapped in Mount Vernon and Seattle, trees uprooted or snapped in Kirkland, trees across roads and onto cars around Sultan, Monroe and Lake Stevens, and trees on homes and cars in Sudden Valley near Bellingham. A large tree fell on a metro bus in north Seattle, and a passenger train hit a fallen tree near Stanwood; NOAA notes none of the 47 people aboard were hurt.

NOAA’s own explanation is the combination of strength and an unusual direction. Trees in the Puget Sound lowlands grow up under south and southwest winter winds; an east wind pushes them from the side they are least braced for, and by late November the ground is usually wet from fall rain.

What homeowners can learn from it

• Check every side of a big tree after an east wind. Look for a cracked or lifted root plate, heaving soil and new lean on the east side as well as the west. The tree risk checklist walks through the signs.
• Keep shelters and parked cars out of reach during a wind warning. Both deaths in this storm happened when trees fell on places people were sheltering: a house southeast of Kirkland and a tent in Lynnwood. The tree reach calculator shows how far a tree of a given height can reach.
• Photograph before anything is moved. Pictures of the tree, the stump or root plate and the damage are the evidence an insurer will want; storm damage and tree insurance in Oregon and storm damage and tree insurance in Washington explain what policies usually cover.
• If a tree is on the house, a car or a line, get people out of reach first. Then call the utility for anything touching wires; emergency tree service and fallen tree removal cover what happens next, and tree work safety explains why a crew should handle trees under tension.

For the Seattle area, see emergency tree service in Seattle, and for trees on lines, Puget Sound Energy tree trimming. Before the next storm season, the tree risk checklist walks you around your own trees, and Oregon storm records and Washington storm records put this storm in context.

How this page was built

Every number above is computed from NOAA’s Storm Events bulk files for episodes 198372, 197537, 197538, 197836, 197837, 197975. Episodes were chosen by ranking all Washington and Oregon episodes from 2016 to mid-2026 on tree-relevant report counts, property damage and tree mentions, and episodes from different offices or states were merged when their narratives describe the same system on the same dates. Cascade and eastern Washington snow from the same low, and coastal wind from later systems on November 21 and 22, are separate NOAA episodes and are not counted here. Damage figures are NOAA’s nominal-dollar estimates and are often blank. See all storms on the storm history index and the site’s methodology.