NASA satellite captures stunning snow-covered Midwest region after polar vortex blast

Satellites in low Earth orbit captured sweeping images that revealed the size of the winter storm that painted much of the northern United States white.

Images captured on January 6 by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on NASA’s Aqua satellite reveal widespread snow across Midwestern states. It’s enough to make Old Man Winter blush.

With all eyes on ferocious wildfires in Southern California, it’s easy to forget that much of the country is still in the throes of a cold front that has blanketed much of the Great Plains, Midwest and mid-Atlantic in snow, sleet and ice. frost. Although it’s worth noting that some of the white in the image above is actually cloud cover; White spaces can be separated from each other False-color version From the picture.

The source of the snow – and the extreme cold, although that is not clear from visible light images – was A Polar vortex This pushed cold Arctic air south into the continental United States from Texas to the mid-Atlantic, causing temperatures to fall between 5 degrees to 20 degrees Fahrenheit below average. Some parts of the snow-covered landscape got about 1.5 feet (0.46 meters) of snow — though that, of course, is indistinguishable from satellite images.

We still have more than two months of winter left, and another cold snap could be just around the corner. National Weather Service Forecast Center published A short-range forecast early Wednesday warned of “moderate to heavy snowfall downwind from the Great Lakes,” a “developing winter storm” that will produce snow, ice and freezing rain over the Southern Plains and lower Mississippi Valley. As well as snowfall in the Rockies and upper Midwest.

That’s not to mention the “extremely critical fire weather area” on the Southern California coast, as the bulletin also noted Fueled by the powerful and fast-moving Santa Anna Winds from the north and northeast.

Important climate events are It can be easily seen from space Because of the way they change the landscape, either by turning it into a winter wonderland or by burning it to bits. But either way, NASA satellites (and those of other agencies) will be there to survey our path. The environment is changingHow do we react to this change?