Hurricane Dorian struck the Bahamas at unprecedented intensity for that island nation, and as the most intense storm on record at landfall in the North Atlantic Ocean Basin. Not surprisingly, early information from the Bahamas shows widespread devastation after some locations were exposed to a terrifying barrage of nearly two straight days of major hurricane conditions (Categories 3, 4 and 5).

Grand Bahama Island was under the eyewall of Dorian, the most severe part of the hurricane, for 40 straight hours as the storm crawled at a record-slow pace for a tempest so strong.

The Finnish satellite company ICEYE, which uses synthetic-aperture radar to discern features on Earth’s surface, released an image taken by its satellite on Monday at 11:44 a.m. local time that shows the areas that were probably inundated on Grand Bahama Island. This satellite has an advantage over other Earth-observing satellites in that it’s not limited by clouds associated with storms like Dorian.

The ICEYE image shows widespread flooding, though much of the water has encroached on the international airport and relatively sparsely populated areas, at least as of the time the picture was taken.

The enormous scope of the storm surge flooding is also apparent in these remotely sensed images from the Sentinel satellite, which shows Great Abaco Island before and after the storm:

Other images and videos coming out show widespread devastation, particularly in Marsh Harbor and Abaco. Officials have not had time to overfly and assess the damage on all of the 70-mile-long Grand Bahama Island, which had a Category 4 and 5 onslaught for an unimaginably long time.

Donna Finlayson-Doran lost touch with her family in the Bahamas as the islands were battered by Hurricane Dorian. (The Washington Post)