The city of Baghdad ground to a halt on August 8, 2005, under a cloud of suffocating dust. According to news reports on the TerraDaily Website, the dust reduced visibility to as little as 3 meters, and slowed traffic to a crawl. City officials shut down Baghdad’s main airport. Iraq constitution talks were postponed. Though the dust shut down most of the city, it bolstered the business of vendors selling face masks, and added to the workload of health care providers. Yarmuk Hospital reported 1,000 cases of suffocation and one fatality from the dust.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (
MODIS) flies onboard both the
Aqua and
Terra satellites. Aqua MODIS captured the dust storm beginning on August 7 (top). Terra MODIS caught the same storm in full force on August 8 (bottom). Though reports describe the dust as orange at ground level, it appears light beige in both of these images. The storm swept southeast through Iraq toward the Persian Gulf, the city of Baghdad in the middle of its path.
NASA images created by Jeff Schmaltz,
MODIS Rapid Response team.
Description
The city of Baghdad ground to a halt on August 8, 2005, under a cloud of suffocating dust. According to news reports on the TerraDaily Website, the dust reduced visibility to as little as 3 meters, and slowed traffic to a crawl. City officials shut down Baghdad’s main airport. Iraq constitution talks were postponed. Though the dust shut down most of the city, it bolstered the business of vendors selling face masks, and added to the workload of health care providers. Yarmuk Hospital reported 1,000 cases of suffocation and one fatality from the dust.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (
MODIS) flies onboard both the
Aqua and
Terra satellites. Aqua MODIS captured the dust storm beginning on August 7 (top). Terra MODIS caught the same storm in full force on August 8 (bottom). Though reports describe the dust as orange at ground level, it appears light beige in both of these images. The storm swept southeast through Iraq toward the Persian Gulf, the city of Baghdad in the middle of its path.
NASA images created by Jeff Schmaltz,
MODIS Rapid Response team.
Description
