Astronauts have captured views of Hurricane Florence raging in the Atlantic Ocean and heading toward a likely landfall in the Carolinas on the U.S. East Coast, with one flight engineer calling the storm a “no-kidding nightmare.”
The wide-angle views from the space station, orbiting around 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth, show the hurricane churning on a track toward the west-northwest.
European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst shared a series of images on Twitter, commenting on the sight of the hurricane and describing the view as “chilling.”
Ever stared down the gaping eye of a category 4 hurricane? It’s chilling, even from space. #HurricaneFlorence #Horizons https://t.co/RdDmGgduou pic.twitter.com/2TlMghY4OL
— Alexander Gerst (@Astro_Alex) September 12, 2018
Watch out, America! #HurricaneFlorence is so enormous, we could only capture her with a super wide-angle lens from the @Space_Station, 400 km directly above the eye. Get prepared on the East Coast, this is a no-kidding nightmare coming for you. #Horizons pic.twitter.com/ovZozsncfh
— Alexander Gerst (@Astro_Alex) September 12, 2018
In a separate tweet, Gerst showed another expansive view of Hurricane Florence on Thursday, with the eye looming several hundred miles off shore as outer cloud bands approached the North Carolina coastline. He urged local residents to heed evacuation orders.
As of 8 p.m. EDT Wednesday (0000 GMT Thursday), the National Hurricane Center said Hurricane Florence’s maximum sustained winds were 115 mph, a Category 3 storm. While peak winds inside the cyclone weakened slightly Wednesday, the storm grew in size, with hurricane-force winds extending outward up to 70 miles (110 kilometers) from the eye, and tropical storm-force winds out to a distance of up to 195 miles (315 kilometers) as of the 8 p.m. EDT update Wednesday.
At that time, Hurricane Florence was located about 335 miles (540 kilometers) southeast of Wilmington, North Carolina.
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