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

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

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

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

With all eyes on the 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 covered most of the Great Plains, Midwest, and the Mid-Atlantic in snow, ice, and sleet. Though it’s worth noting that some of the white in the above image is actually cloud cover; The white expanses can be separated from one another in a false-color version of the image.

NASA data revealing temperature swings across the states; the coldest temperatures were in the Midwest and Great Plains while the hottest temperatures were in the southwestern and southeastern corners of the country.
NASA data revealing temperature swings across the states; the coldest temperatures were in the Midwest and Great Plains while the hottest temperatures were in the southwestern and southeastern corners of the country. Image: NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison, using GEOS-5 data from the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at NASA GSFC and MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview.

The source of the snow—and frigid cold, though that’s not clear from visible light images—was a polar vortex that pushed cold Arctic air far south into the continental U.S. From Texas to the Mid-Atlantic, causing temperatures to sink 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 of course that’s not discernible from the satellite images.

There are still over two months of winter, and another bout of cold may be around the corner. The National Weather Service’s Prediction Center published a short-range forecast bulletin early Wednesday that warned of “moderate to heavy lake-effect snow downwind from the Great Lakes,” a “developing winter storm” that will produce snow, icing, and freezing rain over the Southern Plains and Lower Mississippi Valley, as well as snow in the rockies and Upper Midwest.

That’s to say nothing of the “Extremely Critical Fire Weather Area” on the south California coast, the bulletin also noted, which is fueled by strong, fast-moving Santa Ana winds from the north and northeast.

Significant climate events are easily seen from space due to the way they change the landscape—either by turning it into a winter wonderland or charring it to bits. But either way, NASA satellites (and those of other agents) will be there to survey the way our environment is changing, and how we react to that change.



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