On Monday, April 8, most of North America will have the chance to see the Moon pass in front of the Sun during a solar eclipse. NASA is inviting the public to participate with in-person events, opportunities to do NASA science, and multiple ways to watch online. Millions of people along the path of totality – which stretches […]
NASA Earth Observatory
Posted inCalifornia
NASA Earth Observatory: Satellites Show Gains in California Water
After years of intense drought and diminishing groundwater, California just saw its greatest year-over-year water gains in two decades, according to data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO) satellite mission, a partnership between NASA and the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ). This past winter’s bonanza of atmospheric rivers alleviated some of the water deficit that the […]
Posted inUS
Wildfire Smoke Smothers the Northeast
Wildfire smoke from Canada has passed over the northeastern U.S. multiple times each summer in recent years, but it often goes unnoticed because it is relatively high in the atmosphere. That was not the case in June 2023. In the first week of the month, large amounts of smoke from fires in Quebec poured south into the eastern U.S. […]
Posted inRegional
The Lyrids Meteor Shower peaks tonight
The Lyrids meteor shower, which peaks during late April, is one of the oldest known meteor showers. The Lyrids have been observed for 2,700 years. The first recorded sighting of a Lyrid meteor shower goes back to 687 BC by the Chinese. The Lyrids are known for their fast and bright meteors. Though not as […]
Posted inRegional
Precipitation Piles on in California
Two successive atmospheric rivers hit California in March 2023, bearing rain, snow, and strong winds. Hundreds of thousands of people lost power as the storm toppled trees, unleashed mudslides, and flooded streets. The clouds parted on March 16, allowing the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite to acquire a clear false-color image (right) of Sacramento and the San […]
Posted inUS
Power Outages in Puerto Rico
After being struck by fierce winds, torrential rainfall, and widespread flooding from Hurricane Fiona, citizens of Puerto Rico were enduring significant power outages in mid-September 2022. Extreme heat and troubles with water supplies added to the miseries for the people, while federal and local agencies worked to bring relief. The blackouts came almost exactly five years after Hurricane Maria decimated the island, […]
Posted inRegional
Eyes on the Snow as Water Supplies Dwindle
As the American West suffers a 22-year-long “megadrought” that researchers say is the worst in at least 1,200 years, water managers now have a new level of insight into just how much water will be available for their communities. Water departments in the West are using maps and models originally created by a NASA team […]
Posted inCalifornia
NASA Earth Observatory: Death Valley Flash Flooding
August 10, 2022 – In early August 2022, flash floods soaked Furnace Creek in Death Valley, the driest place in North America. In just three hours on August 5, a thousand-year rainfall event dropped 75 percent of the local average annual rainfall, which is just under 2 inches (5 centimeters). Flood water washed debris over roads, swept […]
Posted inEnviro
Lake Mead Keeps Dropping
Continuing a 22-year downward trend, water levels in Lake Mead stand at their lowest since April 1937, when the reservoir was still being filled for the first time. As of July 18, 2022, Lake Mead was filled to just 27 percent of capacity. The largest reservoir in the United States supplies water to millions of people across seven […]
Posted inRegional
Buck Supermoon tonight
Since the peak of this full moon is less than 10 hours after the Moon was closest to the Earth in its orbit, this will be a supermoon. The term “supermoon” was coined by astrologer Richard Nolle in 1979 and refers to either a new or full moon that occurs when the Moon is within […]
Posted inSci/Tech
NASA: A Salty Sanctuary in Baja California Sur
Laguna Ojo de Liebre on the Pacific coast of Mexico is the site of one of the largest saltworks in the world. The lagoon and saltworks lie near the town of Guerrero Negro, about halfway between the U.S-Mexico border and the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula. The saltworks was founded here in 1954. Each […]
Posted inRegional
December Solstice Brings Winter, Summer Seasons
In meteorology, Earth’s winter season for the Northern Hemisphere and summer season for the Southern Hemisphere began on Dec. 1, 2021. However, the December solstice brings in the astronomical winter and summer seasons, respectively, for the two hemispheres of our planet. This will happen on Dec. 21 at 15:59 UTC, which is 7:59 a.m. PST in the […]
Posted inRegional
An almost total lunar eclipse tonight
November 18, 2021 – A lunar eclipse occurs when the Sun, Earth, and Moon align so that the Moon passes into Earth’s shadow. In a total lunar eclipse, the entire Moon falls within the darkest part of Earth’s shadow, called the umbra. In this eclipse, up to 99.1% of the Moon’s disk will be within Earth’s umbra. […]
Posted inCalifornia
NASA Earth Observatory: Extratropical Cyclones Drench West Coast
One of the most intense extratropical cyclones ever to strike the Pacific Northwest drew an equally historic amount of moisture onto the West Coast of North America on October 24-25, 2021. The storm off the coast of Washington—with a central pressure of 942.5 millibars, equivalent to a category 4 hurricane—was the second extreme low-pressure storm […]
Posted inCalifornia
Mapping Methane Emissions in California
In October 2016, an aircraft equipped with NASA’s Airborne Visible Infrared Imaging Spectrometer–Next-Generation (AVIRIS-NG) instrument detected multiple plumes of methane arising from the Sunshine Canyon landfill near Santa Clarita, California. The plumes were large enough that researchers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) notified facility operators and local enforcement agencies about it. It was an […]
Posted inSci/Tech
NASA: New online visualization tool will enable anyone to see what sea levels will look like anywhere in the world in the decades to come
NASA’s Sea Level Change Team has created a sea level projection tool that makes extensive data on future sea level rise from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) easily accessible to the public – and to everyone with a stake in planning for the changes to come. Pull up the tool’s layers of maps, […]
Posted inWorld
Earth from Orbit: Fires Rage Across the Globe
As wildfires continue to rage in North America, the Dixie Fire became the second largest fire in California history. The fire has burned more than half a million acres, filling the air as far as Denver and Salt Lake City with smoke. And that’s just one of 108 large fires that have burned more than […]
Posted inRegional
A Long View of Sierra Snow
In Spanish, Sierra Nevada means “snowy mountain range.” While the term “snowy” has generally been true for most of U.S. history, those mountains have seen less snow accumulation in recent years. This decline plays a role in water management and response to drought in California and other western states. Each spring and summer, meltwater runoff from Sierra […]
Posted inEnviro
Study Projects a Surge in Coastal Flooding, Starting in 2030s
High-tide floods – also called nuisance floods or sunny day floods – are already a familiar problem in many cities on the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported a total of more than 600 such floods in 2019. Starting in the mid-2030s, however, the alignment of rising sea […]
Posted inCalifornia
California Reservoirs Reflect Deepening Drought
Just four years after emerging from a severe multi-year drought, California has descended into dry conditions not seen since 1976-77. Evidence of the new drought stands out in satellite images of the state’s two largest reservoirs. The images above and below, acquired by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8, show Shasta Lake and Lake Oroville this year and […]