NASA Satellite Captures Stunning Snow-Covered Midwest After Polar Vortex Blast

Satellites successful low-Earth orbit captured sweeping images revealing the standard of the wintertime tempest that painted overmuch of the bluish United States white.

The images, captured connected January 6 by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrumentality connected NASA’s Aqua satellite, uncover the dispersed of snowfall crossed the Midwestern states. It’s capable to marque Old Man Winter blush.

With each eyes connected the ferocious wildfires successful Southern California, it’s casual to hide that overmuch of the state is inactive successful the throes of a acold beforehand that covered astir of the Great Plains, Midwest, and the Mid-Atlantic successful snow, ice, and sleet. Though it’s worthy noting that immoderate of the achromatic successful the supra representation is really unreality cover; The achromatic expanses tin beryllium separated from 1 different successful a false-color version of the image.

NASA information revealing somesthesia swings crossed the states; the coldest temperatures were successful the Midwest and Great Plains portion the hottest temperatures were successful the southwestern and southeastern corners of the country. Image: NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison, utilizing GEOS-5 information from the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office astatine NASA GSFC and MODIS information from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview.

The root of the snow—and frigid cold, though that’s not wide from disposable airy images—was a polar vortex that pushed acold Arctic aerial acold southbound into the continental U.S. From Texas to the Mid-Atlantic, causing temperatures to descend betwixt 5 degrees to 20 degrees Fahrenheit beneath average. Some parts of the snow-covered scenery got astir 1.5 feet (0.46 meters) of snow—though of people that’s not discernible from the outer images.

There are inactive implicit 2 months of winter, and different bout of acold whitethorn beryllium astir the corner. The National Weather Service’s Prediction Center published a short-range forecast bulletin aboriginal Wednesday that warned of “moderate to dense lake-effect snowfall downwind from the Great Lakes,” a “developing wintertime storm” that volition nutrient snow, icing, and freezing rainfall implicit the Southern Plains and Lower Mississippi Valley, arsenic good arsenic snowfall successful the rockies and Upper Midwest.

That’s to accidental thing of the “Extremely Critical Fire Weather Area” connected the southbound California coast, the bulletin besides noted, which is fueled by strong, fast-moving Santa Ana winds from the northbound and northeast.

Significant clime events are easily seen from space owed to the mode they alteration the landscape—either by turning it into a wintertime wonderland oregon charring it to bits. But either way, NASA satellites (and those of different agents) volition beryllium determination to survey the mode our environment is changing, and however we respond to that change.