With all the rain that fell on Vancouver Wednesday, it wasn’t hard to imagine that people were being drenched by a river in the sky.
Which they were, in a manner of speaking.
WATCH: Heavy rainfall in Metro Vancouver
As much as 50 millimetres of rain fell across Metro Vancouver on Wednesday. The storm flooded streets, felled trees and left cars driving in water levels up to their bumpers.
The rain came as part of a phenomenon known as an “atmospheric river,” Global News meteorologist Kristi Gordon confirmed.
Atmospheric rivers, which function like “rivers in the sky,” are “relatively long, narrow regions in the atmosphere… that transport most of the water vapour outside of the tropics,” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
“We haven’t seen a classic one this week because of the sun we saw yesterday between storm one and two but close enough,” Gordon said.
The “rivers” are columns of vapour that move alongside the weather, and the amount of water vapour they carry is “roughly equivalent to the average flow of water at the mouth of the Mississippi River,” according to the NOAA
When these systems hit land, they “often release this water vapour in the form of rain or snow.”
The U.S. National Weather Service tweeted a NASA composite photo showing storm systems approaching the West Coast of North America earlier this week:
It subsequently tweeted a second NASA image, which indicated that the West Coast could see more substantial rain on the weekend:
The “river in the sky” currently ushering rain to West Coast cities like Vancouver and Seattle is over 8,000 kilometres long, according to The Washington Post,
It’s expected to bring in a third storm on Friday night that will take over Vancouver skies on Saturday.
The rain is expected to continue through the weekend before the sun peeks out again on Sunday, according to Environment Canada.
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