It's hard to believe that this beauty can cause so much grief and damage, but from space even the deadliest of natural disasters always looks strangely soothing and mesmerizing. Those explosions of clouds seem to come from Earth herself.


This video shows five days of deadly Midwestern tornadoes, from May 20 to 25. It was taken by the GOES-13 satellite, and it shows "the storms that spawned the deadly Joplin, Missouri tornado on May 22 (around 5:30 p.m.) and the Oklahoma tornado event (Oklahoma City and Piedmont, Oklahoma) on May 24, 2011."

The GOES (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite) network is operated by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA. You can actually watch them all updating here. [NASA Goddard]