Typhoon Hinnamnor: First Category 5 Cyclone on Earth in 2022
The world's ocean basins have been largely quiet and free of tropical cyclones for the majority of 2022. Typhoon Hinnamnor, which quickly spun up to category-5 status in the Western Pacific Ocean last week, disturbed the calm. The storm's route has been unpredictable thus far, and it's not yet certain whether it will make landfall. On August 31, 2022, late in the morning, an astronaut at the International Space Station captured the image above. On September 1, 2022, NASA's Aqua spacecraft took a natural-color picture of Hinnamnor using the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). In spite of the fact that the typhoon in the photograph appeared to be moving toward Taiwan, it had already begun to shift north and away from the island. The U.S. Joint Typhoon Warning Center reported that Hinnamnor had sustained winds of 115 knots (140 miles/220 kilometers per hour) with gusts as high as 140 knots (160 miles/260 kilometers per hour) at the time of the MODIS imag...