International Space Station astronaut Terry Virts has captured a view of a hurricane's eye -- the kind of picture that is incredibly difficult to get from anywhere except the ISS.
Heck, it's even quite difficult to do from the ISS.
Hurricane Andres is a Category 4 storm in the eastern Pacific. As the ISS flew over it, Virts looked down and saw the eye clearly surrounded by towering thunderheads and violent winds, known as the eye wall. The image illustrates some key concepts of hurricane science.
For example, the eye is where the storm's atmospheric pressure is lowest, and where the wind is calm or nearly calm. Surrounding the eye, just a few miles from the calm center, are the storm's most ferocious winds, wrapped tightly in the eye wall.
At the time the photo was taken, the storm had sustained winds of at least 140 miles per hour, with higher gusts.
Sometimes the most powerful hurricanes have eyes with swirling low-level clouds that rotate in geometric shapes, as if being spun from above like a spinning top.
Looking straight down into the eye of Hurricane #Andres at dawn. pic.twitter.com/h4TFluba1m— Terry W. Virts (@AstroTerry) June 1, 2015
Hurricane Andres is forecast to rapidly weaken through Wednesday, going from a Category 4 storm to a tropical storm in that period.
Monday is the first day of the official 2015 Atlantic Hurricane Season, though the first storm of the season, tropical storm Ana, occurred in May. The Atlantic season is expected to be less active than the eastern Pacific, mainly due to a strengthening El Niño event.