Despite remaining offshore, Hurricane Simon delivered a powerful blow to Mexico’s Pacific coast, unleashing destructive winds, torrential rainfall, and severe flooding. Yet, even as coastal communities braced for the impacts of the massive storm, advanced spaceborne instruments captured an extraordinary and rarely seen phenomenon high above the clouds: colossal atmospheric waves rippling through Earth’s upper atmosphere, triggered by the sheer fury of the hurricane below.

Hurricane Simon formed as the latest in an exceptionally active series of powerful tropical cyclones sweeping across the Eastern Pacific during the 2026 hurricane season. On October 11, 2026, the storm escalated into a formidable Category 4 hurricane, tracking on a north-northwest trajectory that brought it dangerously close to the Mexican coastline. At its peak intensity during this phase, the hurricane sustained maximum winds reaching an astonishing 250 kilometers (155 miles) per hour, marking it as a significant meteorological threat to the region.

Hurricane Simon Batters Mexico’s Pacific Coast

The storm’s close approach to land was documented in remarkable detail by advanced Earth-observing technology. At approximately 2:30 p.m. local time, corresponding to 20:30 Universal Time, on October 11, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard NASA’s Suomi NPP satellite captured a high-resolution image of the sprawling cyclone. At the exact moment of the satellite overpass, Simon’s distinct eye was located roughly 50 kilometers—about 30 miles—offshore, positioned squarely between the major coastal cities of Manzanillo and Puerto Vallarta.

According to updates issued by the National Hurricane Center (NHC), sustained winds within the hurricane had slightly decreased to approximately 210 kilometers (130 miles) per hour by the time the VIIRS instrument recorded the image. Nevertheless, despite this marginal weakening, the hurricane’s powerful and destructive inner core remained dangerously close to the shoreline, posing an immediate and severe threat to populated areas and infrastructure all along the Mexican coast.

As the storm progressed, the rugged terrain of the Sierra Madre mountain range played a crucial mitigating role in limiting Simon’s overall strength. The towering topography acted as a physical barrier that disrupted the storm’s circulation, helping to reduce its overall intensity and shrinking the geographical footprint affected by its most ferocious outer bands. Even with this natural buffering effect, however, the hurricane brought relentless, torrential rainfall and widespread flooding to coastal communities, severely impacting the vital port city of Manzanillo. Meteorological authorities and news reports also emphasized that the continuous, heavy downpours significantly elevated the risk of dangerous, life-threatening mudslides throughout the steep, mountainous terrain of the region.

NASA Captures Strange Waves Above the Hurricane

While Hurricane Simon churned threateningly across the open waters of the Pacific, meteorological satellites were simultaneously recording a breathtaking and unusual spectacle unfolding far above the cloud tops.

During the early morning hours of October 11, the sheer thermodynamic energy of the storm generated massive, rippling disturbances that propagated vertically all the way into Earth’s upper atmosphere. A specialized nighttime satellite image, captured by the VIIRS instrument aboard the NOAA-21 satellite, successfully revealed intricate atmospheric gravity waves spreading outward in concentric ripples directly above the churning hurricane.

These complex waves originate from intense, violent activity occurring deep within the storm’s core. In the immediate vicinity of the hurricane’s eyewall, the intense release of latent heat acts as a powerful engine, fueling vigorous convection that forces vast amounts of warm, moist air to surge rapidly upward. This process builds towering cumulonimbus clouds that punch high into the troposphere.

The immense vertical momentum and strong updrafts generated inside these towering cloud structures severely disturb the surrounding air masses, spawning waves that travel progressively upward into the stratosphere and mesosphere. Unlike ocean waves, which propagate through liquid water, atmospheric gravity waves are pressure and buoyancy disturbances that travel through compressible air, relying on gravity and atmospheric stability as a restoring force.

Why the Rare Atmospheric Ripples Were Visible

Although exceptionally powerful tropical cyclones are fully capable of generating atmospheric gravity waves, satellite instruments are not always able to detect them. High-altitude winds and turbulent shearing can frequently weaken, distort, or completely disperse these delicate atmospheric disturbances long before they ascend to the mesosphere. It is only when these waves reach specific upper-atmosphere layers that they can sometimes become visible through a faint, luminescent phenomenon known as airglow.

Airglow is a natural, diffuse emission of light produced by chemical reactions among gases high in Earth’s upper atmosphere. When atmospheric gravity waves propagate upward and pass through this glowing atmospheric layer, they induce subtle, periodic variations in local density and temperature. This creates alternating bands of enhanced and diminished brightness, revealing the distinctive, wave-like ripple patterns to sensitive spaceborne sensors.

The day-night band of the VIIRS instrument possesses the extreme radiometric sensitivity required to detect this faint upper-atmosphere illumination. However, this same high sensitivity means the sensor also captures background moonlight reflected from Earth’s surface, clouds, and lower atmospheric layers, which can easily overwhelm and obscure the much weaker optical signatures of airglow.

Fortunately, environmental and astronomical conditions aligned in a uniquely favorable manner when the satellite passed over Hurricane Simon. With minimal illumination from the Moon casting background glare, the delicate atmospheric ripples stood out with exceptional clarity against the dark backdrop of space, enabling the satellite to capture the striking and scientifically valuable visual patterns.

Hurricane Simon’s Unpredictable Path Raises Concerns

By the morning of October 13, forecasters and meteorologists were still grappling with high levels of uncertainty regarding Simon’s future trajectory and potential intensity fluctuations. The storm’s erratic behavior continued to defy standard forecasting models, leaving scientists with difficult predictive challenges.

In its official bulletins, the National Hurricane Center explicitly characterized its confidence in both the intensity and track forecasts for Simon as "very low confidence." This rare designation underscored how the hurricane had repeatedly deviated from standard historical patterns and behaved in ways that caught forecasters by surprise.

At that stage in the storm’s lifecycle, one prominent meteorological scenario indicated that Simon could eventually execute a northward turn, potentially entering the confined waters of the Gulf of California before making an eventual landfall on the mainland.

Regardless of the exact track the hurricane would ultimately take, oceanographers and coastal authorities warned that massive, powerful swells generated by the storm’s large wind field would continue to create highly hazardous marine and surf conditions along substantial portions of Mexico’s southwestern and west-central coastlines over the ensuing days.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison, using VIIRS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE, GIBS/Worldview, the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership, and the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS).