File:Atsani 2015-08-19 0325Z (Earth Observatory).jpg

English: While it has been a quiet hurricane season in the Atlantic Basin, the western North Pacific has been churning out typhoons on a near weekly basis. One of the most recent to emerge—Atsani—achieved super typhoon status (equivalent of a Category 4 or 5 storm) earlier this week as it churned over the Pacific well northeast of Guam and Saipan.

Atsani was the twelfth typhoon and sixth super typhoon of the year in the western North Pacific—numbers that meteorologists say put the season on a record-breaking track. While the storm will likely curve northeast in the coming days and miss Japan, it remains of interest to atmospheric scientists studying the inner workings of typhoons.

The image, acquired the same day by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Aqua satellite, showing Super Typhoon Atsani is at peak intensity at 03:20 UTC.