Hurricane Irma was a Category 5 superstorm when it lashed the Caribbean island of Barbuda on September 6, 2017.

Irma’s eye passed directly over the small island, and wind gusts of 185 miles per hour stripped the island’s vegetation. Villages were destroyed. An estimated 95 percent of the island’s structures were damaged, including destruction of its hospital, schools, and airport. Barbuda’s 1,800 residents evacuated to Antigua.

The dramatic changes to the island caused by Irma, the strongest Atlantic hurricane on record, are shown in this pair of images from Landsat 8. Landsat uses shortwave-infrared, near-infrared, and green wavelengths to reveal those changes. The August 27 image shows healthy vegetation as bright green. In the September 12 image, that bright green appears washed out, the degraded vegetation after the storm.