14 DAY TRIAL // A new NASA press release features an amazing satellite photo showing the aftermath of the powerful snow storm that struck the upper Midwest of the United States over the past weekend. The image shows large amounts of snow covering the land nearly as far as the eye can see.
Throughout the intense storm, more than 17 inches of snow were deposited in this region of the US, leading most notably to the collapse of the roof covering the Metrodome football complex, in Minneapolis. Still, the state of Minnesota was not especially hard-hit.
The day after the storm let loose, NASA flew its Terra Earth-sensing satellite over the Midwest, and snapped a series of pictures of the aftermath. The blanket of snow appears bright white in this view.
According to the American space agency, the flyby took place on Sunday, December 12. The Terra spacecraft used its Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) to collect the data.
The info packets were then relayed to the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), in Greenbelt, Maryland, were the MODIS Rapid Response Team processed and released them to the general public.
The flyby took place at around 17:20 UTC (12:20 pm EST), the MODIS Image team reports, and covers areas in South Dakota, south Minnesota, eastern Iowa, northern Illinois, Indiana and southern Wisconsin, which are the regions that were hard-hit by the storm.
“In the satellite image, northern Minnesota appears darker because there was less snowfall. The snow storm mostly affected the lower half of the state, which appears as a brighter white in the image,” the NASA statement reads.
“The National Weather Service (NWS) reported that 17.1 inches of snow fell in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota on Saturday. Some of the suburbs of the twin cities reported as much as 21 inches of snow,” the document goes on to say.
Over the past couple of years, weather patterns in the United States have begun shifting slightly, producing weather events that are either uncommon for the time they appear, or are more intense than ever.
Some scientists can't but see a connection to climate change and global warming. Some of the effects these phenomena have been predicted to produce match what is currently going on to the letter.
Such was the case last year, when powerful snow storms swept through the Midwest and Northeast, causing car accidents, the canceling of schools and jobs, and a lot of economic damage.