Super Typhoon Haiyan observed from satellite Suomi NPP VIIRS Longwave Infrared Imaging Band I5 (significantly down-sampled), showing in brightness temperature. Haiyan was one of the strongest tropical cyclones ever recorded. This image was taken on November 8, 2013 over the Philippines. I just 3D printed one today with a size of 5cmx5cmx2cm.To make this thing is relatively simple. First, you find a image and make sure it is in "gray scale". Very likely you will need to downsample it a bit so that it is small enough, say 200x200 rows and columns. Then you probably need to smooth it using image processing software such as ImageJ or GIMP so that is doesn't have too many spikes. Finally you generate the mesh using Matlab. The key Matlab function to use is the 'meshgrid'. And then write it out as .stl using 'stlwrite'. Enjoy.