“Hurricane Matthew is a monster storm. Now it has a monster image to match. A sinister image of Hurricane Matthew, resembling a human skull, has lit up the Internet. The creepy satellite photo was posted Tuesday by Weather Channel senior meteorologist Stu Ostro as the hurricane made landfall in Haiti. The image shows the hurricane through an infrared camera lens. It’s been tweaked to show the storm in apocalyptic colors that accentuate the hurricane’s eye and make its teeth look like the comic book character Ghost Rider or the Grinch, some Twitter users suggested. It’s creepy, but in a nutshell, CNN meteorologist Judson Jones explains that “basically, scientists use color tables to identify the strongest part of the storm.” –Source

I only post this in the hopes of answering some of the up and coming emails in the next few days regarding the image you see on the left. No, it is not doctored or photoshopped in anyway. And no, the sky near the center and the outskirts of the storm are not blood red. The meteorologist software places the colors there to show severity so as to have a better way of warning people in the path of the storm. Living in a tornado prone region I know too well what those colors mean and I must say I would not want to be in that area when that kind of wind hits.

That all being said…   Continue reading →