Watch Isaac Creep Up on New Orleans, From Space

Residents of the Gulf Coast have had a couple of uneasy days to ponder the arrival of Isaac, a tropical storm that around noon today whipped itself into a Category 1 hurricane. During this waiting period, the storm crashed the GOP convention in Tampa, buffaloed over the Gulf of Mexico and is now pushing into the mouth of the Mississippi River.

Though it's rated as the least fierce category of hurricane, with face-wrinkling winds of about 75 m.p.h., footage shot from space shows that a hurricane is still a damn hurricane: something that demands awe and respect. The tempest has surrounded itself with a titanic doughnut of tropical storm-force winds measuring 410 miles wide. Its cloud cover darkens east Texas to the west and the Carolinas to the east. New Orleans has shut down its public schools until Friday, and Louisiana and Mississippi are bracing for a storm surge that could push 6 to 12 feet of water into coastal areas at high tide.