Astronaut Shares Look at Hurricane Milton from Space as Storm Nears Florida
A NASA astronaut is giving a birds-eye view of Hurricane Milton.
Astronaut Mathew Dominick shared a photo and video of what the category 5 storm looked like from space on social media ahead of its projected landfall in Florida.
The timelapse video he shared on X (formerly known as Twitter) showed a large funnel of white clouds in the center of a blue sea. Dominick also shared a separate photo on X of what the storm looked like outside of the window of the Dragon Endeavor, a spacecraft manufactured and operated by SpaceX to take crews to the International Space Station.
“Expect lots of images from this window as this is where I’m sleeping while we wait to undock and return to Earth,” Dominick wrote alongside the photo.
Ahead of the storm’s impact, Florida officials, including Tampa Mayor Jane Castor, have been encouraging people to evacuate the area for their safety. In a new Oct. 9 update, Castor told Today the storm surge could be as high as “10-15 ft.” and people may not be able to evacuate once “hurricane speed winds” hit.
“This isn’t a drill,” she said. “This is the biggest storm that we have certainly seen here in the Tampa Bay area in over a century.”
She said that law enforcement officers and social engagement personnel have been going “door to door” encouraging people to evacuate their homes for their safety. She said the main thing they predict may cause major damage is the high waters that could cause extensive flooding in the area.
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“It is the water that we have to run from that is going to be the most impactful,” she said, adding that “any wobble” in the storm could also “make a significant difference for the Gulf Coast.”
Hurricane Milton, which as of a 5 a.m. local time update is tracking as a category 5 storm with winds gusting at over 160 mph, is expected to make landfall in Florida either overnight Wednesday, Oct. 9, or early Thursday, Oct. 10.
“On the forecast track, the center of Milton will move across the eastern Gulf of Mexico today, make landfall along the west-central coast of Florida late tonight or early Thursday morning and move off the east coast of Florida over the western Atlantic Ocean Thursday afternoon,” the National Hurricane Center said.
The NHC added that it projects that Milton will bring “life-threatening” hazards to the western coast up and down central and southern Florida, centered on the Tampa Bay area.
This comes as the state is still recovering from Hurricane Helene, which made landfall in northern Florida’s Big Bend region late on Sept. 26, before carving a path of destruction through the Southeast and killing more than 200 people.