Hurricane Sandy at Night

Hurricane Sandy at Night
This satellite image shows the cloud tops of Hurricane Sandy lit by a nearly full moon. The lights of Florida’s urban areas shine through the relatively thin clouds on the periphery of the hurricane. It acquired on October 26, 2012, by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi-NPP satellite. At the time the center of the storm was near the Bahamas, and featured maximum winds of 85 miles per hour (140 kilometers per hour) according to the National Hurricane Center.

NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using VIIRS Day-Night Band data from the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) and the University of Wisconsin's Community Satellite Processing Package. Suomi NPP is the result of a partnership between NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Department of Defense. Caption by Robert Simmon.