Mid-December Snowstorm in U.S.

Credit: NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center, Posted on: Tuesday, 25 December 2007, 08:05 CST Download full size image

A major snow storm slid across the United States over the weekend of December 15, 2007, laying down ice and snow across the country from the Rockies to the Great Lakes. More than a foot of snow fell in some places, canceling air travel and causing some states to forbid all but emergency vehicles from being on the roads. This was the second major storm to wallop the country’s mid-section in December; the first arrived at the start of the month.

As the storm moved toward the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, the skies cleared over the Midwest on December 16, allowing the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite to capture these images of a wide swath of snow spanning the country’s mid-section.

The snow highlights the topography of the Rocky Mountains, which run north-south through the images in a series of sub-ranges from Idaho and Montana to New Mexico. The evergreen forests on their slopes appear dark brown. Near the center of the image, the dark blue ribbon of the Missouri River cuts through South Dakota, the river widening in places in a series of reservoirs.

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