Scientists have discovered a ‘space hurricane’ on Earth.

Scientists have identified a “space hurricane” – a woman about 620 miles wide of plasma in the atmosphere above the magnetic north pole.

The hurricane struck in August 2014, but scientists did not know it had happened yet, when an international team of researchers took note of the event while studying satellite observations of that period. The discovery, the first of its kind, was published last month in the journal Nature Communications.

Mike Woodwood, a space scientist and co-author of the study at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, said: “Yet, it was uncertain whether space plasma hurricanes existed, so it is unbelievable to prove such an observational observation.”

The storm, which lasted about eight hours, would have been visible to the naked eye, but no one is likely to have seen it, as it has landed at such lat latitudes, Lockwood told USA Today.

However, a picture of Qing-hee Zhang, lead study author at Shandong University in China, shows what he looked like.

Larry Lons, professor of meteorology and marine science at the University of California, Los Angeles, explained to NBC News why space plasma is similar to a revolving hurricane, which our people on Earth are more familiar with.

“You would see the flow of plasma moving around, which was like the wind of a space hurricane,” he said. “These currents were the strongest at the edges and decreased as you move the air in the center, before lifting the other side again, like the flow of air in a regular hurricane.”

And when the Earth’s hurricane rained down, the space hurricane rained electrons into the atmosphere.

Changes in the atmosphere of space can affect things like GPS signals and satellite communications. Researchers suspect that space hurricanes may be relatively common, and have yet to be detected.

Zhang told Vice that his team had already found other cases in the satellite data. “Space hurricane features are showing.” The published study describes only one, which he called “the best” in terms of how clear it was.