Aerial footage has captured the haunting stillness inside the eye of Hurricane Melissa, which made landfall in Jamaica as a catastrophic Category 5 storm. The video shows a clear, calm center surrounded by towering cloud walls, an eerie contrast to the storm’s 175 mph (280 km/h) winds and life-threatening conditions. Forecasters warn of massive flooding, storm surge, and devastation across the Caribbean as Melissa continues its deadly path.
Even the most ferocious of storms have a soft spot, a region in the center of all that swirling cloud that remains calm and clear and free of the most severe weather. This is the eye of the storm, a phenomenon that still baffles scientists and has yet to be fully explained. But how does an eye occur, and why are some people prepared to fly an aircraft through the most extreme of weather conditions to reach it?
For an explanation, click through this gallery for some eye-popping facts.