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Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Hurricane Patricia

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OriginalHurricane Patricia off the Pacific coast of Mexico on October 23, 2015, at its record peak intensity. At the time of this image, NOAA Hurricane Hunters measured a barometric pressure of 879 mbar (hPa; 25.96 inHg) and sustained winds of 200 mph (325 km/h); these values ranked Patricia as the most intense tropical cyclone ever observed in the Western Hemisphere.
Reason
High-resolution image of a historic storm at its peak intensity. The stars aligned perfectly for NASA's Terra satellite to capture Hurricane Patricia in all its glory simultaneous with a Hurricane Hunter mission that observed the record values (further details here: Hurricane Patricia#Meteorological history). Beautiful structure, as expected, and frankly one of the finest images of a hurricane I've ever seen. The unique timing from a Sun-synchronous orbiting satellite and the ground-truth data from recon sets this image apart from others in terms of historic value; the image was taken at 17:30 UTC and the dropsonde that confirmed the record low pressure was launched at 17:33 UTC.
Articles in which this image appears
Hurricane Patricia, 2015 Pacific hurricane season, Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale, List of Category 5 Pacific hurricanes, List of the most intense tropical cyclones, List of Pacific hurricanes
FP category for this image
Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Natural phenomena/Weather
Creator
Image was created by NASA via their Terra Satellite (original, raw images here: [1] [2]). Data was extracted from their EOSDIS Worldview webpage and slightly modified by Meow to reduce over-exposure and center the image on the storm. A non-storm centered, "gallery" version provided by NASA has also been uploaded here: File:Patricia 2015-10-23 1730Z (gallery).jpg.

Promoted File:Patricia 2015-10-23 1730Z.jpg --Armbrust The Homunculus 03:08, 5 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]