About  |   Contact  |  Mongabay on Facebook  |  Mongabay on Twitter  |  Subscribe
Rainforests | Tropical fish | Environmental news | Blog | For kids | Madagascar | Photos | Non-English languages | Tropical Conservation Science | Jobs
SHARE:





Courtesy of NASA

Satellite image of floods in Northern California
NASA release
January 6, 2006



Northern California ushered in 2006 with a series of major storms that inundated the area and left many towns awash in water, mud, and debris. According to a report from the USATODAY.com Website, at least two levees in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta region were unable to handle the rising waters and strong winds, and residents nearby evacuated as the water-control structures began leaking. In the wine-country town of Napa perhaps as many as 1,000 homes were flooded along with thousands of acres of rural and agricultural land. The governor declared several counties in the region flood disaster areas.


This pair of images shows flooding in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley region inland of San Francisco Bay. The image on the left was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite on December 10, 2005, while the image at right was captured on January 4, 2006, just days after the severe storms passed through. Dark blue pools of water swamp far larger areas of ground in January than they did in December. The Sacramento River is very wide and turbid; the sediment in the water is reflective and gives the river its lighter blue appearance. The northern reaches of San Francisco Bay are also bright with sediment, which may be a mixture of river run-off and churning of the Bay by storm winds. Vegetation is bright green, snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains is bright blue (upper right), and bare or sparsely vegetated ground appears pinkish or reddish tan.

The rain-producing storms that passed through the state became blizzards as they crossed the mountains. A wider-area image produced by the MODIS Rapid Response Team shows snow cover on the Sierra Nevada Mountains and across the Great Basin.

NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center

This is a modified news release from Earth Observatory & Natural Hazards. The purpose of NASA's Earth Observatory is to provide a freely-accessible publication on the Internet where the public can obtain new satellite imagery and scientific information about our home planet. The focus is on Earth's climate and environmental change.













CITATION:
NASA release (January 06, 2006). Satellite image of floods in Northern California. http://news.mongabay.com/2006/0106-nasa.html


Tags:
climate science climate change remote sensing Satellite Imagery green

print


News index | RSS | News Feed | Twitter | Home


Advertisements:


Organic Apparel from Patagonia | Insect-repelling clothing




Mongabay Store
Wildlife of Madagascar T-shirt
Wildlife of Madagascar T-shirt
Bold and Dangerous - Pygmy tyrant t-shirts
Bold and Dangerous - Pygmy tyrant
Love me before I'm gone - Gladiator frog t-shirts
Love me before I'm gone - Gladiator frog
Licking this frog may make you crazy t-shirts
Licking this frog may make you crazy





WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
Email:





SUPPORT
Mongabay.com seeks to raise interest in and appreciation of wild lands and wildlife, while examining the impact of emerging trends in climate, technology, economics, and finance on conservation and development (more)

Help support mongabay.com when you buy from Amazon.com



POPULAR PAGES
Rainforests
Rain forests
Amazon deforestation
Deforestation
Deforestation stats
Why rainforests matter
Saving rainforests
Deforestation stats
Rainforest canopy

News
Most popular articles
Worth saving?
Forest conservation
Earth Day
Poverty alleviation
Cell phones in Africa
Seniors helping Africa
Saving orangutans in Borneo
Palm oil
Amazon palm oil
Future of the Amazon
Cane toads
Dubai environment
Investing to save rainforests
Visiting the rainforest
Biomimicry
Defaunation
Blue lizard
Amazon fires
Extinction debate
Extinction crisis
Blackwashing
Industrial deforestation
Save the Amazon
Rainforests & REDD
Brazil's Amazon plan
Malaysian palm oil
Avatar story
New Guinea
Sulawesi
Amazon ranching
Madagascar
Borneo

News topics
Amazon
Biofuels
Brazil
Carbon Finance
Conservation
Climate Change
Deforestation
Energy
Happy-upbeat
Indonesia
Interviews
Oceans
Palm oil
Rainforests
REDD
Solutions
Wildlife
MORE TOPICS



Non-English Sites
Chinese
French
German
Greek
Indonesian
Italian
Portuguese
Spanish
Other languages

Nature Blog Network









Photos
Alaska photos
Alaska

Argentina photos
Argentina

Australia photos
Australia

Belize photos
Belize

Brazil photos
Brazil

Cambodia photos
Cambodia

China photos
China

Colombia photos
Colombia

Costa Rica photos
Costa Rica

Deforestation photos
Deforestation

Frog photos
Frog

Gabon photos
Gabon

Grand Canyon photos
Grand Canyon

Honduras photos
Honduras

India photos
India

Indonesia photos
Indonesia

Kenya photos
Kenya

Laos photos
Laos

Lemur photos
Lemur

Madagascar photos
Madagascar

Malaysia photos
Malaysia

Monkey photos
Monkey

New Zealand photos
New Zealand

Panama photos
Panama

Peru photos
Peru

Peru photos
Rainforest


Sunset

Suriname photos
Suriname

Tanzania photos
Tanzania

Thailand photos
Thailand

Uganda photos
Uganda

United States photos
United States

Venezuela photos
Venezuela



HIGH RESOLUTION PHOTOS / PRINTS


CALENDARS
  • Mount Kenya
  • East Africa Safari Wildlife
  • Kenya's Turkana People
  • Peru
  • African Wildlife
  • Alaska
  • China
  • Madagascar Chameleons


    CANVAS BAGS

  • Hallucinogenic frog bag
  • Madagascar wildlife bag








  • Copyright mongabay 2010

    Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions generated from mongabay.com operations (server, data transfer, travel) are mitigated through an association with Anthrotect,
    an organization working with Afro-indigenous and Embera communities to protect forests in Colombia's Darien region.
    Anthrotect is protecting the habitat of mongabay's mascot: the scale-crested pygmy tyrant.