Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Hurricane Patricia

Hurricane Patricia of 2015 at its record peak intensity

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Original – Hurricane 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.

• Support as nominator – ~ Cyclonebiskit (chat) 02:21, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
• Support. Quite high quality and very encyclopedic. — Cirt (talk) 04:09, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
• Support majestic and disquieting Vesuvius Dogg (talk) 04:48, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
• Support – Yann (talk) 08:34, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
• Support — Chris Woodrich (talk) 23:26, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
• Support --Tremonist (talk) 13:56, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
• Support – well-timed, high-quality capture of one of the most significant tropical cyclones in recent history. – Juliancolton | ^Talk 02:27, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
• Support – Jobas (talk) 15:51, 4 November 2015 (UTC)
• Support, high EV. sst✈^discuss 17:42, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Promoted File:Patricia 2015-10-23 1730Z.jpg --Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 03:08, 5 November 2015 (UTC)