Envirocast® On-Line Feature of the Week -- February 19, 2007

Mid-Atlantic Snow Cover

The images in this Envirocast® Bulletin were taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) onboard NASA's Aqua satellite on February 11 and February 16, 2007. They show the Washington-Baltimore-Philadelphia metropolitan area after the recent snow and ice storm.

Mid-Atlantic Snow Cover

The above MODIS images are from February 11 and February 16, 2007.  They show the Washington-Baltimore-Philadelphia metropolitan area after the recent snow and ice storm on February 13-15.  You can clearly see where the changeover from a wintry mix to rain occured.

 

Environmental Impacts:

  • The storm is being blamed for at least 15 deaths so far.

  • About 300,000 customers lost power in Ohio, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Kentucky, Indiana, New York's Long Island and the District of Columbia.

  • Hundreds of motorists were stranded on a 50 mile stretch of Interstate 78 in eastern Pennsylvania.  Many motorists were trapped there for over 24 hours.  Sections of the highway were covered in 4 to 6 inches of ice.

  • Passengers on JetBlue flights at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City were stuck on the runway for up to 8 hours on Wednesday, February 14.

Supplementary Material:

NASA's AQUA Satellite:

  • Aqua, Latin for water, is a NASA Earth Science satellite mission collecting about the Earth's water cycle, including evaporation from the oceans, water vapor in the atmosphere, clouds, precipitation, soil moisture, sea ice, land ice, and snow cover on the land and ice. The Aqua spacecraft (formally known as EOS-PM) was successfully launched on May 4, 2002 at the Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB) in Lompoc, California. It is flying at an altitude of 705 km (438 miles) observing the Earth, and the life expectancy is 6 years. [Aqua's Orbit], [Animation of MODIS Observing the Earth]

  • Aqua passes south to north over the equator in the afternoon, and thus it passes over us at the same local time every day, approximately 1:30 p.m.

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