Hurricane Irma Images: What A Category 5 Storm Looks Like

The worst may be yet to come from Hurricane Irma, which has been churning over the Caribbean and powered up into a Category 5 storm. It is still going after wiping through Antigua and Barbuda, St. Martin and Anguilla, and St. Kitts and Nevis on its way to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

Most people who live through a hurricane see the storm from the ground, as it tears apart buildings and sends water rising into homes. From the air, however it looks completely different. Here are some images of Hurricane Irma from above to put the storm into perspective.

Stadium of clouds

The eye of a hurricane is a calm pillar through the center of the storm where few clouds penetrate — they simply swirl around it. From within that eye, the clouds can appear like they are rising in walls around it, forming a shape similar to a stadium. This sight has earned the name “the stadium effect.”

Irma has a well-defined eye through which pilots known as hurricane hunters from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Air Force Reserve have bravely flown to capture images of the hurricane. The stadium effect appeared intense this week.

That effect is apparent even in the dark, while the moon shines onto the cloud tops.

When looking down onto the hurricane, the bowl shape of the stadium effect is clearer.

Up above the world so high

From even higher up, satellites have a view of Hurricane Irma that makes the storm look tiny. But against the shape of Earth below it, the storm is a sight to behold.

Some satellites were watching before Irma smacked into the Leeward Islands.

This is what it looked like as it made a beeline for the small island Anguilla.

The International Space Station often captures images of hurricanes as they swirl through oceans, and Irma was no exception. The ISS took video of the storm as it hung heavily and obscured the water and land forms below it.

One part of the video that is particularly striking is when the space station’s external cameras cut to a view of the hurricane as a cargo spacecraft docked to the ship, part of the Russian fleet called Progress, photobombs it. Although the large piece of equipment is so close to the camera, the spacecraft still looks petite in comparison to the hurricane, which is a couple of hundred miles away.

Although it is unclear how far Hurricane Irma will go and how much damage the storm will cause, it is clear that it looks formidable.