Video: Watch Hurricane Sandy’s ‘Massive Extent’ Rage In The Atlantic Ocean

NASA has released a video of Hurricane Sandy — a “superstorm” with a 2,000 mile extent — churn in the Atlantic Ocean as it moves toward the East Coast. The time-lapse animation of images taken from NASA’s GOES-14 satellite shows the category 1 hurricane from 22,300 miles above earth.

Stu Ostro, a senior meteorologist with the Weather Channel, put the storm into context:

“History is being written as an extreme weather event continues to unfold, one which will occupy a place in the annals of weather history as one of the most extraordinary to have affected the United States.”

“A meteorologically mind-boggling combination of ingredients is coming together: one of the largest expanses of tropical storm (gale) force winds on record with a tropical or subtropical cyclone in the Atlantic or for that matter anywhere else in the world; a track of the center making a sharp left turn in direction of movement toward New Jersey in a way that is unprecedented in the historical database, as it gets blocked from moving out to sea by a pattern that includes an exceptionally strong ridge of high pressure aloft near Greenland; a “warm-core” tropical cyclone embedded within a larger, nor’easter-like circulation; and moisture from the tropics and cold air from the Arctic combining to produce very heavy snow in interior high elevations. This is an extraordinary situation, and I am not prone to hyperbole.”

Hurricane Sandy is expected to cause billions of dollars in damages and impact 50 million people along the East Coast of the U.S.