Recent measurements of the production of the Higgs boson with subsequent decay to a W boson pair are discussed. Leptonic decays of the W bosons are sought, selecting events with a pair of leptons with opposite charge and missing transverse momentum. Jet activity associated with the Higgs boson production, together with event topology, are used to classify events in categories sensitive to different Higgs boson production mechanisms. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of $35.9~\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$, collected by the CMS detector at the LHC in pp collisions at $\sqrt{s}=13~\mathrm{TeV}$. The combination of all categories lead to an observed signal strength of $1.28^{+0.18}_{-0.17}$, compared to the standard model prediction for a Higgs boson with a mass of $125.09~\mathrm{GeV}$. With an observed signal significance of $9.1\sigma$, this is the first observation of the Higgs boson decay to a W boson pair with CMS.