Hurricane
Wilma appears at its peak strength in this image captured by cameras aboard the
International Space Station (ISS).
At its fiercest,
Hurricane Wilma was the strongest storm ever recorded on the Atlantic Ocean,
and rated a Category 5 status with maximum sustained winds near 175 miles an
hour.
From orbit
220 miles above Earth, the storm appears like a massive, fluffy whirlpool in
the sky. Cameras mounted to the exterior of the ISS caught this view of Wilma
on Oct. 19 as the storm moved across the Caribbean Sea about 340 miles southeast
of Cozumel, Mexico.
By Oct. 24,
the hurricane reached the southwestern edge of Florida in the United States,
but had weakened to a Category 2 storm at the time it made landfall. By 5:00
p.m. EDT (2100 GMT), Wilma had strengthened back to a Category 3 storm and was
blamed for at least six deaths, leaving about six million people without electricity.
-- SPACE.com Staff
Credit: NASA.
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