The Monster Hurricane Patricia Seen From Space

Friday afternoon, the eye of the incredibly powerful Hurricane Patricia reached Mexico's west coast. The sheer strength of this hurricane is difficult to exaggerate, and even harder to grasp. It went from the weakest Category 1 to a Category 5 in a single day, intensifying to become the strongest hurricane ever seen in the western hemisphere. The image above was taken by the GOES-East satellite on Oct. 23, 2015, at 14:45 UTC, and shows the hurricane stretching out for well over 2000 km. This ima...