14 DAY TRIAL // About a week and a half ago, Alaska was hit by a freak heat wave that made people do the unthinkable: head for the beaches and sunbathe.
Due to this heat wave, NASA's Terra Satellite's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer got the chance to snap a picture of a cloudless and nearly ice-free Alaska.
“On most days, relentless rivers of clouds wash over Alaska, obscuring most of the state's 6,640 miles [10,690 kilometers] of coastline and 586,000 square miles [1,518,000 square kilometers] of land, ” NASA writes in a post accompanying this picture.
“That was certainly not the case on June 17, 2013, the date that the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite acquired this rare, nearly cloud-free view of the state. The absence of clouds exposed a striking tapestry of water, ice, land, forests, and even wildfires,” adds the same post.
At the time the picture was taken, temperatures in Talkeetna hit an impressive 96 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius), Mongabay reports.
People in other parts of the state were also trying to cope with the intense heat.