Saturday, February 5, 2011

Visible Satellite Imagery: It's Not Just for Clouds Anymore...


The above visible satellite image was taken at approximately 10:55 CST this morning.  What you see on the Texas and Oklahoma portion of the image (as well as parts of Missouri and Arkansas) is not cloud cover, but snow that is on the ground from the storms of this week. I've highlighted part of the major snowfield's general area in yellow on the image below:


If you look closely at the image, you can see lakes and rivers outlined with snow along their banks in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri.  Here are just a couple of examples below:



If it weren't for widespread cloud cover, you could also see the snowfield across eastern Missouri and Illinois as well.  In fact, snow is currently falling across the Illinois portion of this image at the present time!


The next image below shows the snow depth this morning across the Midwest and Plains per the National Snow Analyses Center:



So the next time you look at a visible satellite image, take an even closer look around - because you never know what you may find!

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