Busy Pacific storm season brings typhoon remnants toward Alaska
The Northwest Pacific has experienced an unusually active storm season, with Super Typhoon In-fa developing an unusually large eye near the Mariana Islands while the remnants of Typhoon Champi moved toward Alaska, Qazinform News Agency reports, citing NASA.
According to NASA's Earth Observatory, the Northwest Pacific has recorded 25 named storms since April 2026. On October 29, the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) aboard the DSCOVR satellite captured both systems, showing In-fa churning near the Mariana Islands and Champi's remnants approaching Alaska.
In-fa displayed characteristics of an annular storm, including a nearly circular shape and an unusually large eye. Such storms are rare, accounting for about 4% of tropical cyclones in the western North Pacific. Their eyes average approximately 45 kilometers in diameter, compared with about 25 kilometers in standard tropical cyclones.
Meanwhile, Champi underwent an extratropical transition as it entered the Bering Sea. Unlike tropical cyclones, which draw energy from warm ocean waters, extratropical cyclones are typically fueled by temperature contrasts between warm and cold air masses. They also tend to develop broad wind fields and large, comma-shaped cloud formations.
NASA meteorologist Gary Partyka said Champi's remnants appeared to have become intertwined with and intensified a midlatitude storm over the Bering Sea. Alaska experienced high winds, heavy rain and snowfall, although the impact was less severe than that of ex-typhoon Halong in October 2025.
Champi was the fourth ex-typhoon to enter Alaskan waters in 2026, following Bang-Lang in August, Dujuan in September and Choi-wan in early October, according to University of Alaska Fairbanks meteorologist Rick Thoman.
The storm had previously reached maximum sustained winds of nearly 300 kilometers per hour as it moved through the western Pacific. Despite narrowly skirting Taiwan and Guam, it brought damaging winds and intense rain to both places, as well as to parts of China and Japan.
Gary Partyka identified the strong El Niño developing in the Pacific as a likely contributor to the increased storm activity. The climate pattern can influence storm tracks in the Northwest Pacific, making it more likely for storms to curve northward toward Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Japan and the Korean Peninsula.
Earlier, Qazinform News Agency reported that NASA’s Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes had captured detailed images of the Cat’s Head Nebula, a dynamic star-forming scene located about 7,500 light-years away from Earth in the Carina Nebula.