Images & Animations
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Credit
Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC
A winter storm packing a one-two punch charged out of the Mid-West and into the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast between December 4 and 7, 2003, dumping the first big snow of the season on the Eastern United States. As much as three feet of snow fell in parts of the northeast, with lesser amounts spread across the Mid-Atlantic.
This true-color Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) image shows the snowy trail left by the storm across (top row, left to right) Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York; and (bottom row) West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware. The images were captured by the Terra satellite on December 7, 2003.
One of the neat attributes of snow is how it highlights ground features that might otherwise go unnoticed. In this image, the Appalachian Range is picked out in thin waving lines that stretch from central Pennsylvania down into Tennessee and North Carolina (lower left corner). In addition, on the edge of Lake Erie in the 250m image, the snow highlights some of the infrastructure and agriculture between Erie, Pennsylvania, and Cleveland, Ohio.
A bright swath of orange streaks along the Appalachian Mountains and Mid-Atlantic United States in the false-color image. The orange color represents snow left by the winter storms, while green is bare land, white and light orange represent clouds, and black represents liquid water. States shown (from upper right to lower left) are New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, North Carolina, Tennessee, and South Carolina.
Metadata
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Sensor
Terra/MODIS -
Visualization Date
2003-12-08
