While the United Kingdom and most of Europe are farther north than we are, they are still in the same general band of latitude as the United States. That's the band between the tropics and the polar regions called the mid-latitudes. As such, we all experience the same alternating pattern of high and low pressure systems.

The lows are the storms, and from space, the cloud pattern of a well-developed storm often resembles a comma. Here are two satellite images of a major storm system that battered England back in late October with strong winds and heavy rains. The flooding in parts of the country was the worst in 375 years, and damage was estimated at $1.5 billion.

These images come to us from a weather satellite known as METEOSAT-7, owned and operated by the European Space Agency. The images are then jazzed up a bit by our own National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.