NASA’s U.S.-French Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite, which was launched in 2022 from Vandenberg Space Force Base, has spotted large-scale river waves for the first time, the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California has announced. The river waves, which, unlike ocean waves, are temporary surges of water, stretched from 47 to 166 miles long as they traveled down rivers in Montana, Texas, and Georgia, the SWOT satellite recorded. The three large waves measured by the SWOT satellite from 2023 to 2024 were believed to be caused by extreme rainfall and a loosened ice jam, NASA reports. … On Jan. 25, 2024, on the Colorado River south of Austin, Texas, a river wave over 30-feet-tall and and 166 miles long traveled around 3.5 feet per second for over 250 miles before discharging into Matagorda Bay, and was associated with the largest flood of the year on that section of river, according to NASA.