A clear summer day in the Pacific Northwest A clear summer day in the Pacific Northwest. On June 26, 2016, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite flew over the Pacific Northwest and captured this true-color image of an early summer day.

The Pacific Northwest (PNW), sometimes referred to as Cascadia, is a geographic region in western North America bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the west and (loosely) by the Rocky Mountains on the east. Though no official boundary exists, the most common conception includes the Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) and the U.S. states of Idaho, Oregon, and Washington.

Broader conceptions reach north into Southeast Alaska and Yukon, south into northern California, and east to the Continental Divide to include Western Montana and parts of Wyoming. Narrower conceptions may be limited to the coastal areas west of the Cascade and Coast mountains. The variety of definitions can be attributed to partially overlapping commonalities of the region’s history, culture, geography, society, and other factors.

The Northwest Coast is the coastal region of the Pacific Northwest, and the Northwest Plateau (also commonly known as “the Interior” in British Columbia and the Inland Northwest in the United States) is the inland region. The term “Pacific Northwest” should not be confused with the Northwest Territory (also known as the Great Northwest, a historical term in the United States) or the Northwest Territories of Canada. A clear summer day in the Pacific Northwest has shown in image above the clouds surrounding the top of the city and the community