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NASA’s Earth Observatory released several images of the atmospheric river flowing through the Gulf of Alaska earlier this week.

The images show the river – a corridor of moisture in the air that brings large amounts of rain – stretching from the Pacific Ocean to the coasts of Alaska, British Columbia and the Yukon. According to NASA World Hydrometeorological Resources CouncilThe atmospheric river is more than 2,000 kilometers long and less than 1,000 kilometers wide. In other words, it’s roughly the shape of a river, but in the air. This phenomenon often occurs in the extratropical North Pacific region; Last year, much of California was hit by extreme precipitation and snowstorms caused by atmospheric rivers.

However, according to the Earth Observatory, this river is “extraordinarily powerful”. release. In this image taken September 22 by the independent imaging radiometer suite visible from the Suomi nuclear power plant satellite, the river extends from the Pacific coast to the sea. In Bella Bella, British Columbia, between two and four inches of rain fell each day from September 21 to 24. Cities in Southeast Alaska experienced similar amounts of precipitation.

Another image of the river was taken on September 24 by NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (or EPIC) on the Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite, known as DSCOVR. Taken about a million kilometers above Earth, the image clearly shows the river on a larger scale than the image above.

The image (in the lower right corner) also shows Hurricane Helene, which is currently wreaking havoc from South Florida to North Carolina when it was still a tropical storm. Hurricane Helene became a Category 4 hurricane and caused devastating flooding in the southeastern region of America. Atmospheric rivers in the northwest are Category 5, the highest level on the scale, although their intensity is even higher before reaching land.

Researchers at the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at the University of California, San Diego determined that the storm’s integrated water vapor transport (IVT), which is a measure of atmospheric water content and wind speed, was unusually high compared to other atmospheric rivers in the region. region. Last 23 years.

“The end of the atmospheric IVT river in the Gulf of Alaska is truly extraordinary,” Bin Guan, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of California, Los Angeles, said in the same statement. “This could be one of the conditions that could potentially contribute to these very strong atmospheric river events.”

Atmospheric river does not cause major flooding on the Pacific coast, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tools managed by the Water Forecast Office. The same was not true for much of the southeastern United States, which contained yellow, orange, red and purple flood warnings as of midday Friday.