Hurricane Matthew Looks Very Cool, Very Scary From the ISS
The storm is expected to hit Haiti.
Hurricane Matthew is barreling down on Haiti, and the Category 4 storm could hit the United States in the coming days. As you might imagine, such a massive storm looks pretty imposing from space, and cameras outside the International Space Station captured Matthew from above.
The storm, which is currently moving through the Caribbean Sea, was a little more than 200 miles off the coast of Port-au-Prince on Monday afternoon, and it’s expected to wreak havoc on the island nation with 140-mph winds.
Viewed from space, Matthew looks enormous. From its perch in orbit 250 miles above the Earth’s surface, the ISS’s cameras captured the swirling storm, and it’s a doozy. The space station shared a video of the flyby on its Twitter account. The footage is sped up to four times its actual speed, but even then, Matthew appears slow when viewed from this great a distance. It’s pretty — and dangerous.
While the winds are howling, Matthew as a whole isn’t moving that fast, cruising at roughly 7 mph. That’s potentially bad news for the Bahamas since the lingering storm could take three to four days to fully pass over the island chain, meaning there will likely be a ton of storm surge flooding.
As of Monday night, it’s unclear if the storm will hit the U.S., but the Gulf Coast will probably feel the effects of its winds, waves, and surges regardless.
“While there remains significant uncertainty in the track of Matthew in the long range, the threat to Florida and the southeastern U.S. coast has increased,” the National Hurricane Center said in a statement at 5 p.m.
