Tens of thousands of homes in Washington state lost power Tuesday and downed wires or trees locked some highways as Northern California and the Pacific Northwest started feeling the effects of a powerful atmospheric river event,

A powerful winter storm brewing near the Pacific Northwest known as a bomb cyclone is dragging an atmospheric river.

A rotating system of thunderstorms off the coast of Washington will bring rapidly increasing easterly winds to the region Tuesday.

It may be sunny skies Tuesday, but an atmospheric river, supercharged through "bombogenesis," is about to hit the Bay Area. The weather phenomenon is barreling toward the West Coast and has plans to stick around Northern California for days,

The storm, known as a " bomb cyclone ," is dragging an atmospheric river along with it, a plume of moisture-filled air that "will act like a massive firehose of rain at low elevations and a giant snow gun over the high country,