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, […]
NASA Earth Observatory
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 […]
Posted inEnviro
NASA: Gold mining pits in the Peruvian Amazon line the rivers and cut into the rainforest
February 16, 2021 – An astronaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS) took this photograph of numerous gold prospecting pits in eastern Peru. The pits—usually hidden from an astronaut’s view by cloud cover or outside the Sun’s glint point—stand out brilliantly in this image due to the reflected sunlight. The multiple meandering channels of the Inambari […]
Posted inEnviro
A Meeting of Smoke and Storms
In September 2020, historic wildfires on the U.S. West Coast lofted plumes of smoke high into the atmosphere. Pushed by prevailing winds that sweep air from west to east, satellites tracked the smoke as it spread widely across much of the continental United States. A second hazard—tropical cyclones—also helped steer the high-flying smoke plumes as they streamed […]
Posted inSci/Tech
Global Survey Using NASA Data Shows Dramatic Growth of Glacial Lakes
In the largest-ever study of glacial lakes, researchers using 30 years of NASA satellite data have found that the volume of these lakes worldwide has increased by about 50% since 1990 as glaciers melt and retreat due to climate change. The findings, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, will aid researchers assessing the potential […]
Posted inRegional
The 2019 Perseid meteor shower peaks tonight
August 12, 2019 – The Perseid meteor shower is here! Perseid meteors, caused by debris left behind by the Comet Swift-Tuttle, began streaking across the skies in late July and will peak on the night of August 12. The Perseid meteor shower is often considered to be one of the best meteor showers of the […]
Posted inRegional
Trailing the Pacific Crest from Space
Aug. 7, 2019 – There is no award for completing the walk from Mexico to Canada through California, Oregon, and Washington. But read about the journeys of so-called “thru-hikers” of the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), and it is clear that the 2,650-mile (4,265-kilometer) hike changes you. Even walking a small segment of trail can connect […]