Hurricane Florence: NASA camera shows hurricane from space station

Hurricane Florence
approaches the US East Coast in a satellite image taken from
space on September 12, 2018.

CIRA/RAMMB;
GOES-16/NOAA

• Hurricane Florence is
  predicted to slam into the US East Coast as an “extremely
  dangerous major hurricane” overnight on Thursday.
• The storm may stall over South Carolina and North
  Carolina, dump several feet of rain, and trigger widespread
  floods.
• A camera aboard the International Space Station
  recorded video of Hurricane Florence on Wednesday morning, when
  it was about 500 miles offshore.
• NASA called the footage “a
  stark and sobering view” of the storm.

Hurricane Florence is blowing sustained winds of
up to 130 mph as it barrels toward the US East Coast as a

Category 4 storm.

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) predicts that Florence’s outer bands
— and tropical-force winds — will begin to arrive Thursday
morning, with the rest of the storm plowing through the area
through the weekend.

Florence’s predicted path as of Wednesday has it making landfall
on the South Carolina coast, just south of North Carolina. The
NHC says the storm may push a “life-threatening” surge of
seawater ashore into these and other areas.

However, the storm is 500-600 miles wide and may stall over
several states. The NHC says this may bring widespread and
potentially “catastrophic” flooding far inland, since forecasters
predict Florence may dump several feet of rain on some areas of
the East Coast.

Read More:

What that Category 4 label tells us about Hurricane Florence’s
strength

On Wednesday morning, a high-definition video camera outside of
the International Space Station recorded footage of Hurricane
Florence.

The camera “captured a stark and sobering view” of the storm
below “as it churned across the Atlantic with winds of 130 miles
an hour,” NASA said on Twitter.

The clip above is sped up roughly 18 times, while the original
footage that NASA uploaded to Twitter and YouTube lasts more than three minutes.

An astronaut in space also photographed Florence and
two other major storms in the Atlantic Ocean on Monday.

The space station flies over Earth from
an altitude of about 250 miles. The football-field-size
laboratory moves at a clip of roughly 17,500 mph to stay in
constant free-fall (what we call an orbit) around the planet.

Watch NASA’s full video below:

Read more of Business Insider’s hurricane coverage: