It’s pretty crazy.

If you were watching the news during the California wildfires, you may have seen a variety of aircraft dropping water on the fires as they burned. We even found a cockpit view of it happening!

Seeing this, you might wonder where these planes actually get the water that they use to pour over fires. While there are a variety of methods for collecting the firefighting water, one of the most popular — and coolest — involves flying a plane over a nearby body of water and skimming some out of it to be used in firefighting.

Here’s what that process looks like: