An expanded Atmospheric River Reconnaissance program began last month as a result of the unexpected “bomb cyclone” in October 2021 that hit North America’s West Coast, followed by another atmospheric river less than a month later that caused severe flooding in Washington.

“Climatologically, November and December can bring some of the worst floods for that part of the world,” said research meteorologist Marty Ralph, director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes (CW3E) at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Ralph leads the AR Recon program, along with Vijay Tallapragada, Ph.D., Senior Scientist at NOAA’s Environmental Modeling Center, in partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the California Dept. of Water Resources, NOAA Office of Marine and Aviation Operations, and the U.S. Air Force Reserve 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron “Hurricane Hunters.”