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Floods in the Midwestern Uni
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| Title |
Floods in the Midwestern United States |
| Description |
The rivers of northwestern Missouri were still swollen in the wake of intense spring storms when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS [ http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov ]) on NASA's Terra [ http://terra.nasa.gov/ ] satellite captured the top image on May 10, 2007. The image is made from a combination of infrared and visible light to make the floods more visible than they would be in a photo-like image. In this type of image, water is dark blue or black, clouds are light blue and white, plant-covered land is bright green, and bare earth is pink-tinted tan. Fires are outlined with red boxes. The Missouri River runs along the left edge of the image, then curves east along the bottom of the image. Though the most flooded regions were covered in clouds, a few breaks reveal that the Missouri was swollen far beyond its banks. Nestled in a bend in the river near the Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri border is the town of Big Lake. The image shows that the river's curve has turned into a broad lake. The town was completely submerged in the flood when levees along the river broke, reported the Associated Press. [ http://www.cnn.com/2007/WEATHER/05/11/missouri.flooding.ap/index.html ] Beyond Big Lake, many communities along the Grand and the Platte Rivers and their tributaries have also been flooded or threatened by floods. All of these rivers are clearly running high in the image. MODIS captured the lower image on April 29, 2007, not quite a week before the rains began. By providing a clear view of normal water levels, the image illustrates just how extensively the rivers were flooded on May 10. Photo-like versions of both the April 29 [ http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/subsets/?USA3/2007119/USA3.2007119.aqua ] and May 10 [ http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/subsets/?USA3/2007130/USA3.2007130.terra ] images are available from the MODIS Rapid Response System. NASA images courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team [ http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov ] at NASA GSFC. |
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Floods in the Midwestern Uni
…
| Title |
Floods in the Midwestern United States |
| Description |
The rivers of northwestern Missouri were still swollen in the wake of intense spring storms when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS [ http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov ]) on NASA's Terra [ http://terra.nasa.gov/ ] satellite captured the top image on May 10, 2007. The image is made from a combination of infrared and visible light to make the floods more visible than they would be in a photo-like image. In this type of image, water is dark blue or black, clouds are light blue and white, plant-covered land is bright green, and bare earth is pink-tinted tan. Fires are outlined with red boxes. The Missouri River runs along the left edge of the image, then curves east along the bottom of the image. Though the most flooded regions were covered in clouds, a few breaks reveal that the Missouri was swollen far beyond its banks. Nestled in a bend in the river near the Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri border is the town of Big Lake. The image shows that the river's curve has turned into a broad lake. The town was completely submerged in the flood when levees along the river broke, reported the Associated Press. [ http://www.cnn.com/2007/WEATHER/05/11/missouri.flooding.ap/index.html ] Beyond Big Lake, many communities along the Grand and the Platte Rivers and their tributaries have also been flooded or threatened by floods. All of these rivers are clearly running high in the image. MODIS captured the lower image on April 29, 2007, not quite a week before the rains began. By providing a clear view of normal water levels, the image illustrates just how extensively the rivers were flooded on May 10. Photo-like versions of both the April 29 [ http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/subsets/?USA3/2007119/USA3.2007119.aqua ] and May 10 [ http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/subsets/?USA3/2007130/USA3.2007130.terra ] images are available from the MODIS Rapid Response System. NASA images courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team [ http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov ] at NASA GSFC. |
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Drought on the Great Plains
| Title |
Drought on the Great Plains |
| Description |
Across the Great Plains of the United States and Canada, devastating drought spread across grasslands and croplands in summer 2006. Poor winter snowfall and a blisteringly hot summer [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/natural_hazards_v2.php3?img_id=13742 ] following several years of dry conditions have created a dire situation for many farmers and ranchers across the region. According to a recent article [ http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/29/us/29drought.html?ex=1157688000&en=13a216546b7d4243&ei=5070 ] on the New York Times Website, many people are comparing the conditions to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. The widespread drought conditions are obvious in this vegetation anomaly image based on data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) [ http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov ] on NASA's Terra [ http://terra.nasa.gov ] satellite. Places where vegetation is healthier or more abundant than average are green, places where vegetation is about the same as average are pale yellow, and places where vegetation is not as healthy or abundant as average are brown. Gray patches show where no data were available, probably because of persistent clouds. One of the most common satellite-based vegetation maps is a scale, or index, of vegetation greenness called the "NDVI," short for Normalized Difference Vegetation Index. This image compares NDVI values from July 28-August 12, 2006, to the average values from 2001-2005. Vegetation was faring worst along the Missouri River through North and South Dakota, but below-average vegetation conditions stretch across parts of Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, northwestern Nebraska, and Minnesota as well. The plains of Canada's Saskatchewan and Manitoba provinces were suffering drought, too. A few small pockets of green in the image reveal where vegetation greenness values observed by MODIS were higher than average: the mountains of north-central Colorado, southeastern Nebraska, and the Red River Valley. The Red River Valley experienced widespread snowfall and heavy rains in the spring of 2006, leading to significant flooding. [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/natural_hazards_v2.php3?img_id=13500 ] The early-season moisture may have helped the vegetation in the area withstand the hot summer. According to the August 29, 2006, update from the U.S. Drought Monitor, [ http://www.drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html ] most of the Northern Great Plains, as well as much of Oklahoma and Texas, was still in the midst of drought, with many areas falling into the highest category: exceptional drought. NASA image created by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, using data provided by Inbal Reshef as part of the Global Agricultural Monitoring Project [ http://www.pecad.fas.usda.gov/glam.cfm ] between NASA, USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS), and the University of Maryland. |
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Snow Across the Western Unit
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| Title |
Snow Across the Western United States |
| Description |
The Sunday after Thanksgiving is traditionally one of the busiest travel days of the year in the United States as people return home from the four-day weekend. Sunday, November 28, 2004, was no exception, but this year, Mother Nature snarled traffic across a large swath of the west with an intense snow storm. The storm dumped up to 24 inches (0.6 meters) of snow on the mountains of southern Utah, and blanketed the surrounding states. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS [ http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov ]) on NASA's Terra [ http://terra.nasa.gov/ ] satellite captured this image the following day, on November 29, after the clouds moved out. The storm's path is clearly visible in this image: a track of white extends from southeastern Oregon and the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California to Colorado and New Mexico in the east. The National Weather Service reports that the storm moved east across the Plains States of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, and Iowa on November 29 and November 30. The snow highlights some interesting features of the Western United States that might not otherwise be obvious in satellite imagery. Sandwiched between the straight diagonal line of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the west (the straight edge of the snow) and the Rocky Mountains in Central Utah in the east is the Great Basin Desert. This high desert basin covers a heart-shaped region of southern Oregon, Nevada, Utah, and southern Idaho and is clearly outlined in snow. Hemmed between two large mountain ranges that trap moisture from the east and the west, it is the United States' largest desert. It receives on average 7-12 inches of precipitation every year. The water that does fall in the region drains to interior, closed basins instead of the ocean, giving the region its name. The Great Basin Desert is made up of a series of mostly north-south running mountain ranges and valleys that give the land a wrinkled, wash-board appearance, particularly in Nevada. The snow highlights elevation change elsewhere in the image. The imposing Rocky Mountains appear slightly darker than the valleys around them, and the peaks and high plateaus in the south are covered in snow while the pink desert lowlands remain bare. On the right edge of the image, the flat plains of eastern Wyoming and Colorado are an even, uninterrupted white. NASA image created by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, using data obtained from the Goddard Land Processes DAAC |
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Floods in the Midwestern Uni
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nasa, nasanaturalhazards
* eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/ima
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Missouri_TMO_2007130
| mediatype |
IMAGE |
| mediatype |
image |
| date |
2007-05-10 |
| creator |
NASA -- NASA Image Of The Day |
| identifier |
Missouri_TMO_2007130 |
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Thunderstorms and Tornadoes
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nasa, nasanaturalhazards
A major spring storm system
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usa_trmm_2008134
| mediatype |
IMAGE |
| mediatype |
image |
| date |
2008-05-13 |
| creator |
NASA -- NASA Image Of The Day |
| identifier |
usa_trmm_2008134 |
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Drought on the Great Plains:
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nasa, nasaimageofthedaygalle
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Across the Great Plains of t
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nplainsndvia_tmo_2006209
| mediatype |
IMAGE |
| mediatype |
image |
| date |
2006-08-12 |
| creator |
NASA -- NASA image created by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, using data provided by Inbal Reshef as part of the www.pecad.fas.usda.gov/glam.cfm Global Agricultural Monitoring Project between NASA, USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS), and the University of Maryland. |
| identifier |
nplainsndvia_tmo_2006209 |
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