Friday beautiful science

You need to click on this photo to get the true majesty of it. I think we can separate the respect of a destructive storm from the awe of a beautiful photo of Hurricane Dean taken by NASA:

This image of Hurricane Dean arriving at the Yucatan is a combination of observations from NASA and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) satellites. The clouds, including Hurricane Dean, were observed by a NOAA geostationary weather satellite (GOES-12) at 2:45 p.m. local time in Belize (on the Yucatan Peninsula) on August 20. The land surface is a summertime image from the NASA Blue Marble image collection. Hurricane Dean fills the western Caribbean, and the outermost bands of spiraling clouds are already brushing the coasts of the Yucatan in the west and Cuba in the north.

My condolences go out to those who have lost friends and family in this terrible storm.