Astronauts Took Pictures of Typhoon Neoguri—And It Looks Huge, Even From Space
Even from space, Neoguri looks huge
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Storm season is upon us. While Hurricane Arthur put a damper on Fourth of July festivities along the East coast of the United States, Typhoon Neoguri is now battering Japan.
Astronauts on the ISS were able to capture some beautiful (and terrifying) pictures of the storm as it headed towards land. While 540,000 people were advised to evacuate in Okinawa Prefecture, the storm is expected to weaken as it heads out over the East China Sea over the next few days.
Unlike hurricanes in the Atlantic, typhoons are not typically given human names. Instead, they're named after animals, plants and places. (Occasionally a human name gets thrown in too.) Neoguri means raccoon dog in Korean. Even though they have different naming systems, hurricanes and typhoons aren’t different: they’re both large storms with strong sustained winds. The only real difference between a cyclone, typhoon and hurricane is where they occur in the world. The word hurricane is primarily used for Atlantic storms, typhoon for storms that occur in the northwestern Pacific and cyclone for the south Pacific and Indian oceans.