Atmospheric rivers (ARs) are intensive poleward moisture transport events that are essential to the global hydrological cycle and regional water resources, and are often linked to extreme weather events. We categorize the northern Pacific ARs into wind-dominated (windy) and moisture-dominated (wet) ARs based on the first Principal Component on a combined matrix of 850 hPa wind and integrated moisture. Investigation on the ERA5 reanalysis shows that windy ARs and wet ARs have different spatial distribution, distinct characteristics including duration, intensity, and precipitation, and discrete connection to ENSO. It remains not clear on how model can reproduce the ARs flavors. Here for the first time, we develop metrics and evaluate the representation of northern Pacific AR flavors in the CESM2 Large Ensemble simulations which includes 30 ensemble members. The model-simulated ARs are overall consistent with reanalysis, even though the AR frequency is in general shifted poleward in CESM2. CESM2 produces comparable number of wet ARs and underestimated windy ARs. The landfall activity over the west coast of North America shows agreement in the model. The ENSO-AR connection is also reproduced with regional biases possibly due to lower resolution.