Inside the red circle, you can see the heart-shaped cloud spotted on satellite imagery on Sunday, Feb. 7, 2016.

(Image via NWS)

Generally, when meteorologists talk about the heart of the storm, they're not talking about the shape spotted by the National Weather Service on Sunday.

The Wilmington, North Carolina, office of the NWS from satellite imagery, which you can see at the top of this page. In that photo, there's a beautiful heart-shaped cloud right in the middle of the storm system that became Winter Storm Mars.

"This coastal storm loves the Carolina waters. Can you see the heart shape cloud in this visible satellite photo?" the office asked via Twitter.

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When this cloud was seen on satellite imagery, Mars was in the early stages of bombogenesis, according to weather.com meteorologist .This is a term generally applied to a storm whose minimum pressure drops at least 24 millibars in 24 hours, indicating a strong and rapidly intensifying storm system. In the case of Mars, the pressure dropped from 1004 millibars at 7 a.m. EST Sunday to 979 millibars by 1 a.m. EST Monday, or 25 millibars in 18 hours.

The storm system then spun into a glorious cyclone that resembled a tropical storm as it moved up the Eastern Seaboard, gathering enough strength to unleash serious winds and coastal flooding in New England, as well as inches of snow. Less than 24 hours after NWS Wilmington posted its photo of the storm with the heart-shaped cloud, the cluster of white clouds had spun up into a fierce system that created blizzard conditions along the Massachusetts coast.

MORE ON WEATHER.COM: Winter Storm Mars

Jason Souza sweeps the snow from a driveway in New Bedford, Mass., during a snowstorm on Monday, Feb. 8, 2016. The second winter storm in four days to hit the Northeast is expected to bring blizzard conditions to Cape Cod and southeastern Massachusetts and leave behind as much as 18 inches of snow. (Peter Pereira/Standard Times via AP)