[imagesource: Nick Hague/NASA]

Hurricane Dorian is an absolute brute and is leaving a trail of complete and utter devastation in its wake.

The Bahamas has been the hardest hit thus far, with relief workers describing ‘apocalyptic’ scenes amidst an unfolding humanitarian crisis.

According to an Al Jazeera report earlier this morning, at least seven people have been killed, and that number is expected to rise, with the scope of the damage still largely unknown.

This is really heartbreaking:

“It’s total devastation. It’s decimated. Apocalyptic,” said Lia Head-Rigby, who helps run a local hurricane relief organisation and flew over the Abaco Islands.

“It’s not rebuilding something that was there; we have to start again.”

Head-Rigby said her representative on Abaco told her that there were “a lot more dead” and that the bodies were being gathered.

The first aerial footage to emerge drives that point home:

This aerial footage of the Bahamas shows the destruction from Hurricane Dorian on Great Abaco Island https://t.co/3TuV2PdLdV pic.twitter.com/LXL2yc36Zb

— CNN (@CNN) September 3, 2019

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says that the storm is now “finally moving northwestward and growing in size”, although dangerous winds and storm surges are still expected in the Bahamas.

Those tracking the movements of the hurricane from above are seeing some frightening pictures.

These from The Verge, which says that the hurricane has reached “monstrous size”, are some of the more dramatic, starting with NOAA’s GOES-East satellite tracker:

A more zoomed-out image taken by astronaut Christina Koch on the ISS shows the storm’s extensive reach on September 2nd.

Closer to Earth, NOAA’s Hurricane Hunter aircraft continues to fly through Dorian, gathering data for meteorologists to use in their attempts to forecast the hurricane’s path and intensity.

Here’s footage from one of those pilots flying through the eye of the storm:

To get a better idea of Dorian’s structure, meteorologists use images like this from the Suomi NPP satellite.

The infrared image below shows Dorian when it was positioned directly over Grand Bahama:

Other satellite operators, like Finnish company Iceye, have used their tech to look underneath the roiled clouds at what’s happening on the ground. By using synthetic aperture radar, or SAR, satellites and aircraft can bounce microwaves off the ground, and analyze the echos they get back…

You don’t have to know much about weather systems in order to figure out that all the red above isn’t good news.

If you want to keep up to speed with where the hurricane is headed next, you can follow CNN’s live updates here.

[sources:aljazeera&verge]