‘Massive’ pulses from Helene towering 55 miles were recorded from space, NASA says
Hurricane Helene was so powerful at landfall that the Category 4 storm sent pulses 55 miles high — reaching the edge of space, according to NASA. The enormous ripples, known as “atmospheric gravity waves,” were documented by NASA’s Atmospheric Waves Experiment, the space agency said in a Nov. 7 news release. “Like rings of water spreading from a drop in a pond, circular waves from Helene are seen billowing westward from Florida’s northwest coast,” AWE principal investigator Ludger Scherliess said in the release.
The instrument that documented the waves was mounted in 2023 to the outside of the International Space Station, officials said. Its mission is to scan the atmosphere for “ripple-like patterns in the air” that could be linked to violent weather, including tornadoes, tsunamis and hurricanes, NASA says. It counts as the first time the AWE equipment has proven itself to be sensitive enough “to reveal the impacts hurricanes have on Earth’s upper atmosphere.” AWE recorded the waves Sept. 26 as Helene approached Florida’s Gulf Coast. The storm traveled north after landfall, and four days of rain caused catastrophic flooding across the southeastern U.S. Among the worst hit areas were the southern Appalachian Mountains along the Tennessee-North Carolina state line.
The Tennessee Valley Authority reports two months worth of “normal rainfall” fell in just three days, resulting in dams in the TVA system storing “404 billion gallons of water, enough to fill 612,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.” “The hurricane is the third-deadliest hurricane of the modern era (behind Maria and Katrina) with a death toll of over 200,” NOAA reports. “Nearly half of those deaths were in North Carolina. Early estimates suggest the economic losses of Helene could surpass $50 billion dollars, putting the storm costs on the same scale as Hurricanes Katrina, Sandy, and Harvey.”
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