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Hurricane Irma weather maps reveal creepy skull-like face

An unnerving satellite photo of Hurricane Irma reminds some of a similar sinister image of Hurricane Matthew from last year.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Gael Cooper

Hurricanes show their devastating power, but it seems recently, the storms also like to show their faces.

Weather Channel senior meteorologist Stu Ostro shared a satellite image of Hurricane Irma on Twitter late Friday that had sinister face-like features, including a grim mouth and disturbing eye.

Ostro paired the image with a similar one of Hurricane Matthew captured last October when that storm made landfall in Haiti. (We wrote about it here.)

Irma's image looks less terrifying than Matthew to some, primarily because the 2016 Matthew image appeared more skull-like, even baring its "teeth."

Some Twitter users found less frightening reminders in the image.

Of course, as some Twitter users pointed out, there's a name for the tendency our minds have to perceive some familiar pattern where none exists.

But some people can make everything about food, and that's at least a little comforting.

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Hurricane hunters witness Irma's ire from above

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