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It's Thursday, January 12th, 2020. I'm Jackson Bird. Today, what exactly is an atmospheric river?

Why is it causing so much havoc in California right now? And what do these current storms mean for the future?

Plus, NASA and Roscosmos have reached an agreement on how to bring three

ISS crew members back to Earth following a coolant leak on a Soyuz spacecraft. Just don't call it

a rescue mission. Here's some cool stuff for your ride home. Since the end of December, California has been ravaged by unprecedented storms whose

gale force winds and flooding have led to tens of thousands of people losing power, numerous

evacuation orders, caused an estimated billion dollars in damage and killed at least 17 people so far.

The storms have been the result of at least eight atmospheric river events,

and yet another round of storms is expected at the end of this week.

But what exactly is in atmospheric river?

And why are these storms so bad? In short, an atmospheric

river is like a giant river in the sky, hundreds of miles wide, more than a thousand miles long,

and a mile deep, shooting across the ocean powered by strong winds. They carry so much moisture that the water vapor in an atmospheric

river can equal or exceed the average flow of the Mississippi River at the point where it flows

into the Gulf of Mexico, according to the New York Times. And quoting the San Francisco Chronicle,

Atmospheric rivers begin in the tropical Pacific near the equator, where

...