October 8, 2015
An extreme rainfall event in October 2015 inundated eastern U.S. states with a staggering amount of water. The Southeast was hit particularly hard. Some areas of South Carolina saw record-setting rainfall in just 48 hours, which overwhelmed streams and lakes, and saturated the soil. The map is based on data acquired on October 5, 2015, by the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite. The satellite’s radiometer measures soil moisture in the top 5 centimeters of the ground. Data were then mapped as the fraction of the volume of water contained in a volume of soil. Most of the dark blue areas, where soil is completely saturated, have a ratio of about 0.5.