Three tropical cyclones churn together in the Pacific as the Atlantic stays eerily quiet

NASA's EPIC camera captured a striking scene on September 1: three tropical cyclones spinning simultaneously across the Pacific Ocean, while the Atlantic basin sat almost silent by comparison, a split-screen snapshot of just how lopsided this year's hurricane season has become.

What the satellite saw

The image came from the DSCOVR satellite, positioned roughly one million miles from Earth, giving its EPIC camera a full-disk view of the planet that let scientists spot all three Pacific systems in a single frame, alongside a fourth storm churning in the Atlantic. It's a rare kind of image, not because multiple storms exist at once, which happens most years, but because of how starkly it illustrated the imbalance between the two ocean basins on the very same day.

Meet the trio

The most powerful of the three, a storm named Lowell, reached Category 5 strength on September 2, making it the strongest storm of the group by a wide margin. Karina, close behind, achieved Category 4 strength around the same time, and NASA specifically flagged the pairing as unusual, describing it as a rare case of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes occurring simultaneously in the same general area of the Pacific. The third storm, Marie, was still a tropical storm at the time of the image, positioned southwest of Baja California and continuing to strengthen.

What was happening in the Atlantic

While the Pacific was hosting two major hurricanes at once, the Atlantic side of the frame told a very different story. Tropical Storm Edouard made landfall over Louisiana and Texas, dumping an extraordinary 15 to 24 inches of rain on some areas, a reminder that a storm doesn't need major-hurricane status to cause serious flooding damage. Beyond Edouard, though, the Atlantic basin has been unusually subdued for this point in the season.

Why one ocean is roaring and the other is quiet

NASA attributes the imbalance to El Niño conditions, which are altering wind patterns in a way that actively enhances hurricane formation in the Pacific while simultaneously suppressing it in the Atlantic. It's a well-documented seasonal effect, but the numbers behind it this year are especially stark: as of September 3, the Northeast Pacific had already recorded 15 named storms and 6 hurricanes, well above the historical average for this point in the season, while the entire Atlantic basin had managed just 5 named storms and zero hurricanes.

Measuring the imbalance

Scientists use a metric called Accumulated Cyclone Energy, which factors in both the strength and duration of storms over a season, to compare activity levels more precisely than storm counts alone. By that measure, the Pacific's cumulative energy for the season sits at 130, roughly 50 percent above normal, while the Atlantic's figure of 4.4 represents just 9 percent of its typical seasonal total. That gap, more than 14 times the difference, is about as clear a statistical picture of a lopsided hurricane season as the data can offer.

What it means going forward

With El Niño conditions expected to persist for at least part of the remaining season, forecasters will be watching whether the Pacific's unusually active pattern continues to produce major hurricanes like Lowell and Karina, even as the Atlantic remains comparatively calm. For coastal communities on the Pacific side, from Mexico's Baja California coast northward, that pattern means continued vigilance is warranted even while much of the usual Atlantic hurricane-season attention stays muted this year.

The image itself, a single frame capturing four active storms across two oceans, offers a rare, almost cinematic illustration of how interconnected global weather patterns can push activity dramatically in opposite directions within the very same season.