When Hurricane Helene roared into the Southeast with winds near 140 mph, the storm did more than shred roofs and flood streets. High above the chaos, the International Space Station recorded vast, concentric ripples in the upper atmosphere, an eerie pattern of “mystery waves” pulsing roughly 55 miles up. Those rings, invisible from the ground, are now reshaping how scientists think about the way extreme weather shakes the very edge of space.
From the station’s vantage point, the disturbance looked like a stone dropped into a dark pond, with Helene at the center. I see this event as a rare, almost cinematic moment where a landfalling hurricane, a cutting‑edge NASA instrument, and a vulnerable shell of atmosphere all intersected, exposing a hidden link between Earth’s most violent storms and the space environment that modern technology depends on.
Helene’s violent landfall and the birth of the waves
Hurricane Helene did not simply brush the coast, it slammed into the Gulf Coast of Florida with enough force to send storm surge deep into communities and to rattle the atmosphere far above. Reporting shows that Hurricane Helene made landfall along the Gulf Coast of Florida, driving water ashore and triggering widespread impacts on communities and infrastructure. As the storm’s core crossed the coastline, the abrupt change in terrain and friction acted like a brake on a spinning top, forcing the hurricane’s energy to redistribute vertically and outward.
That collision with land was especially intense in Florida’s Big Bend region, where Helene came ashore between Tampa and Tallahassee and then moved inland southeast of Tallahassee, Florida. Meteorologists tracking the system have detailed how Hurricane Helene made landfall between Tampa and Tallahassee, a geography that funnels water and wind into a tight corner of the Gulf. That same configuration appears to have helped focus the storm’s energy upward, seeding the atmospheric gravity waves that would later be captured from orbit.
The ISS vantage point: “mysterious” ripples 55 Miles up
While residents on the ground saw only clouds and rain bands, instruments aboard the ISS were watching a different drama unfold. Sensors on the station detected structured atmospheric waves radiating outward from the storm center, with one report describing how the ISS Detects Mysterious Atmospheric Waves 55 Miles Above Earth Linked Hurricane Helene as the system made landfall. That altitude, roughly 55 Miles above the surface, sits in the lower thermosphere, a region usually associated with auroras and satellite drag, not with the direct footprint of a hurricane.
From that orbital perspective, the waves looked like circular ripples spreading westward from Florida’s north, “like rings of water spreading from a drop in a pond,” as scientists described the pattern. Visualizations based on the same event show the International Space Station passing over the storm while the Atmospheric Waves Experiment mapped those rings, with International Space Station flew overhead, the instrument captured the circular waves billowing westward from Florida’s north. To me, that pairing of a violent landfall and a serene, almost geometric pattern in the upper atmosphere is what makes the event feel so uncanny.
AWE: the mapper built to watch the invisible
The eerie images were not a lucky accident, they were the payoff from a mission designed specifically to watch these kinds of disturbances. NASA’s Atmospheric Waves Experiment, or AWE, is a dedicated mapper mounted on the ISS that stares down at the limb of Earth to track faint emissions from the upper atmosphere. The mission description explains that AWE uses specialized imaging to study how atmospheric gravity waves move energy and momentum from the lower atmosphere into space, with the goal of understanding how those waves affect space weather and the environment around satellites.
Researchers at Utah State University play a central role in interpreting what AWE sees, and they were among the first to flag just how extreme Helene’s signature looked. In their account, Utah State University physicists, who are monitoring data captured by the Atmospheric Wave Experiment AWE, reported enormous wave structures as Helene collided with the Florida coast. They emphasized that these waves can influence conditions experienced by spacecraft and crewed vehicles, including the ISS itself, which is why having a dedicated mapper in orbit is so valuable.
From “gravity waves” to space weather risk
What the ISS saw were atmospheric gravity waves, not the gravitational waves that ripple through spacetime, but oscillations in air density and temperature that behave like waves on a stretched membrane. In the Helene event, those waves were described as Enormous, with Enormous gravity waves recorded as Helene was roaring across the South by NASA’s Atmospheric Waves Experiment. Because these waves modulate density in the upper atmosphere, they can change how much drag satellites experience and can disturb the paths of radio signals that pass through the region.
NASA scientists have stressed that the same gravity waves can disrupt communication signals and other technology, especially when they reach the altitudes where GPS satellites, communications constellations, and crewed spacecraft operate. One detailed analysis notes that NASA Unveils Astonishing Gravity Waves Caused Hurricane Helene On September and explains that these atmospheric waves can influence space weather, affecting modern technological systems. For operators of navigation networks, satellite internet services, and even crewed missions, that means a hurricane’s footprint is no longer just a coastal hazard, it is a space weather event that needs to be monitored in real time.
Decoding the eerie rings and what comes next
To make sense of the Helene waves, scientists have leaned heavily on imagery and animations that translate raw measurements into something the human eye can parse. One visualization package shows the same AWE observations from Sept. 26, 2024, rendered as expanding circles around the storm, with This video uses the same AWE observations from Sept. to highlight how the waves propagated away from Hurricane Helene. Another set of images focuses on the rippling pattern itself, describing how Gravity waves from Hurricane Helene were seen rippling through the sky in new NASA images, with Gravity waves from Hurricane Helene captured as they radiated outward.
Behind those visuals is a more technical story about how the instrument works and why Helene was such a standout case. Engineers describe how the NASA AWE Instrument on the International Space Station Spots Something in the Atmosphere 55 Miles Above Earth when extreme events like Helene occur, with NASA AWE Instrument International Space Station Spots Something Atmosphere detailing how the extreme forces generated by Helene lit up the upper atmosphere. As more storms are observed in this way, I expect researchers to build a catalog of signatures that links specific hurricane structures and intensities to particular wave patterns, turning what once looked like eerie, isolated rings into a predictive tool for both weather and space weather forecasting.
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