NASA satellites capture four tropical cyclones from space

Satellites orbiting Earth have captured a stunning image: a string of four tropical cyclones, including Hurricane Dorian, as they wreak havoc down on the planet’s surface.

As of 1:10 p.m. Eastern time on September 4, Hurricane Dorian, Tropical Storm Ferdinand, Tropical Storm Gabrielle and Hurricane Juliette could be seen stretching in a loose chain across half the planet from NASA’s satellites.

One of those storms, Hurricane Dorian, devastated the Bahamas, slammed into the Carolinas, and swiped New England before making landfall in Canada. More than 40 people were killed in the Bahamas, with more than 70,000 homeless there. 

“It was like an atomic bomb went off,” Sherrie Roberts told CNN on Saturday. Roberts was on the Abaco Islands in the Bahamas when Dorian – then a Category 5 storm – lingered last week.

More than 1,400 evacuees were headed to Florida over the weekend.

Residents of the Bahamas described Hurricane Dorian as unlike anything they’d experienced before.

“The island of Abaco has been through and survived many hurricanes in the past. It didn’t take long for us to rebound, but this is different from anything we’ve ever experienced. This hurricane will set us back for years to come,” resident Ted Curry told CNN.

Another five people were killed in the United States when the hurricane made landfall in the Carolinas. Half a million people in Canada’s Maritimes were left without power on Saturday.

At the time NASA took the photo of the four tropical cyclones, Dorian and Juliette were both Category 2 storms. That puts their windspeeds at about 100 miles per hour.

To capture its image of the storms, NASA used the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite known as GOES-16.

NASA is continuing to monitor the tropical cyclones, along with Typhoon Faxai, which is on track to slam into Tokyo on Sunday. 

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By Kyla Cathey, Earth.com staff writer

Paid for by Earth.com.

Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory, Joshua Stevens; NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service