To many Louisianans, satellite images of the large, swirling, powerful storm barreling toward northern California, Washington and Oregon looked eerily similar. But they differ from hurricanes in many ways.

Meantime, two very different areas, 1,200 miles apart, managed to eke out some fine surf from the beast of a storm: Vancouver Island, on the tail end, and Ventura County as the swell filtered south. Here’s a quick look at both.

A historically strong bomb cyclone killed at least two people and caused a mass power outage that could last for days after it slammed the Pacific Northwest and Canada’s British Columbia with destructive winds.

Bomb cyclone is a term used by weather enthusiasts to describe a process that meteorologists usually call bombogenesis. It’s the rapid intensification of a cyclone in a short period of time, and it can happen during powerful storms such as the one northern California and the Pacific Northwest are preparing for this week.

A "bomb cyclone" riding a long atmospheric river toward the West Coast is expected to bring more than a foot of rain to parts of Northern California and 30-foot waves to the Oregon coast, but the weather won't be quite as catastrophic in and around Los Angeles, the latest forecast models show.

A bomb cyclone and atmospheric river storm resulted in the deaths of two people and knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of West Coast residents