On Oct. 8, 2024, Reddit user @VastCoconut2609 shared a time-lapse video which they said showed the potentially life-threatening Hurricane Milton from space (archived).
The post had received more than 60,000 upvotes and 1,800 comments as of this writing.
Timelapse of hurricane Milton from the International Space Station captured few hours ago.
byu/VastCoconut2609 inBeAmazed
Milton had already started impacting Florida at the time of this publication, with further devastation expected overnight.
Evacuation orders had been put in place across the Sunshine State, and the storm came just two weeks after Florida, among other states, was hit by Hurricane Helene.
A reverse image search revealed the footage in the Reddit post was indeed authentic.
It originated from Matthew Dominick, a NASA astronaut and U.S. Navy commander currently stationed at the International Space Station (ISS), who posted it to X on Oct. 8 (archived).
His video had garnered more than 9 million views and 84,000 likes as of this writing.
Dominick posted another message about Hurricane Milton on Oct. 9, adding that the storm looked "bigger but less symmetric than" the day before (archived).
Timelapse flying by Hurricane Milton today about 2 hours ago. Storm looks bigger but less symmetric than yesterday.
1/2000 sec, f8, 14mm, ISO 500, 0.5 sec interval, 30fps pic.twitter.com/XUjQEJPOGg— Matthew Dominick (@dominickmatthew) October 9, 2024
Updates regarding Hurricane Milton can be found on numerous sites online.