Storms can be both beautiful and deadly.

The winter storm called Ciara (or Sabine in the German-speaking parts of Europe) was just that – it battered parts of Western and Northern Europe causing flooding and wind damage throughout Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, and Poland.

The storm killed at least 5 people, according to The New York Times. (Other sources estimate that the number is up to 8.)

While many people captured photos of the devastation it wrought, one woman’s photos have gone viral because they were pointed upward.

There was a full moon the night they were taken and with clouds surrounding it, it looked like a giant eye looking down over the area.

People are referring to it colloquially as the “eye of the storm.”

A woman named Sarah Hutchinson reposted the photos to a public Facebook group called DRUID. They were originally taken by Sarah Hodges in Bolton, Lancashire in the UK in early February 2020.

Creepy, right?

Of course, people were all too happy to arrange the photos to give them an even more sinister look:

Remarkably, these were taken with a simple camera phone on Hodges’ Samsung S9.

According to Bored Panda, the photographer, who is a 48-year-old baker, told an unidentified news outlet:

“I took the pictures last Tuesday 11 Feb 2020, between 9.34 pm and 9.39 pm, just from my bedroom window at my home address. I am obsessed with the moon, sunset, sunrise, and the sea. I just used my Samsung S9. I know I got lucky, people spend thousands on cameras to get the perfect shot. I feel overwhelmed and proud, as it’s a once in a lifetime shot…”

Now the photos have been shared far and wide by a variety of news outlets, but Hutchinson’s post to DRUID has over 19,000 shares alone.

At first, Hodges didn’t even realize what a dramatic shot she got.

“It was only when scrolling back through the images that I noticed the moon centered around the clouds because in real-time the clouds were constantly moving.”

While the photo is beautiful, the storm’s effects around Europe were anything but. In some places, winds reached over 90mph, over a million people lost power, and the damage from the storm along with the issues it caused for travelers could end up costing in the billions of dollars.

Belgium’s meteorological office explained in a statement that the storm turned vicious over the Atlantic Ocean when it interacted with a jet stream with winds whipping up to 249mph.

“The jet stream behaves like a giant vacuum cleaner which can sometimes dig deep areas of low pressure, creating storm depressions,” they noted.

Parts of Europe were still recovering from Storm Ciara when Storm Dennis hit less than a week later causing more wind damage and flooding and killing 5 people. The Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom were the hardest hit.

And as if that weren’t enough, the Spanish-named Storm Jorge (also called Storm Ellen, depending on which weather service you abide by) hit many of the same places and caused even more flooding in areas that were just starting to recover a week later.

It appears the creepy eye of Storm Ciara was the least of anyone’s worries.

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Source: Bored Panda, The New York Times, Sarah Hutchinson via Facebook, The Weather Channel