Savage cyclone Winston churns over the Pacific's warmest waters, heads for Fiji's two most populous islands

The Himawari-8 satellite provides ominous views of Severe Tropical Cyclone Winston bearing down on Fiji in the South Pacific on Feb. 19, 2016. The first part of the video shows the storm in visible light. Next, we see an infrared view of the cyclone. And last, a view showing water vapor. (Source: NWSOPC) As I am writing this on Friday evening in Colorado, Severe Tropical Cyclone Winston is bearing down on the most populous islands of Fiji, posing a dire threat to the South Pacific island nation with winds that could eventually reach a mind boggling 224 miles per hour. The cyclone has already made landfall on the small Fijian island of Vanua Balavu — at about 1 pm EST today. This means the storm will go into the record books as the strongest tropical cyclone ever to hit the nation of Fiji. And it is only the 11th Category 5 storm to have been observed in the South Pacific east of Australia, according to Weather Underground. Since hitting Vanua Balavu, Winston has been churning westward, heading toward the two biggest Fijian islands: Viti Levu and Vanua Levu, which account for 87 percent of the country's population of almost 860,000.