NASA astronaut Mike Fossum said that Category 3 Hurricane Irene looks “terrifying” from space. Looking at the pictures the astronauts on the International Space Station are posting every day, I’d have to agree.
“There’s kind of a dome shape to the whole thing, with the eye fully formed,” Fossum told Space.com. “Yesterday you could see the eye wall and down into the eye itself. You know that is a powerful storm, and those are never good news when they’re headed your way. So our prayers and thoughts are with the people in its path.”
Fossum said the storm has changed dramatically in the days they’ve been watching it. He said it’s getting more organized—a couple days ago the eye wasn’t as defined as it is now. Yikes.
Irene is supposed to hit the North Carolina coast on Saturday and cut a swath along the Eastern Seaboard up through New York and maybe as far as Boston. (Those people don’t see too many hurricanes up there, lemme tell you.) This thing, with its 115 mph winds, is not gonna be pretty.
From space it looks like a hellion. You get a much better idea of the size of it and the violence of it in a crystal clear digital picture from directly above. You can almost feel the wind circling around the vortex.
And the commentary from the astronauts gives it a whole new dimension. Satellite pictures are intriguing for sure, but a satellite can’t express emotions like terror. You hear Fossum saying it looks terrifying from space, then you look at the pictures and feel it.
Fossum captured it with that simple statement. And posting the images every day gives it a storyline it wouldn’t have otherwise. It’s not just pictures of a storm from space—it’s humans
