Here's What the Southern Floods Looked Like From Space

Sean Breslin
Published: March 17,2016

As the South recovers from days of severe flooding, NASA released the image above to show how swollen the Mississippi River and other nearby waterways became at the height of the disaster.
Taken Monday by NASA's Terra satellite, the false-color image combined visible and infrared light to allow for a closer look at the severity of this flooding event. According to NASA's Earth Observatory, the dark blue shading denotes floodwaters, while saturated soil is light blue and bare ground is brown.
(MORE: Residents Flee as Floodwaters Rise Downstream)
The image focuses on the Mississippi and White rivers in particular, showing the two waterways that snake through Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana. The false color gives us a crystal-clear look at the tributaries that also became flooded during the rainfall, popping out in the image like veins.
The storm system was responsible for dumping as much as two feet of rainfall in some areas, forcing thousands to evacuate as entire towns were flooded. At least seven rivers reported record crests, and the Sabine River in Texas peaked at a record level in three separate locations. Six people died in the floods.
NASA also released a map that showed estimated rainfall totals from these storms. In the image below, areas shaded in darker shades of blue received up to a half-foot of rain, while places with the brightest shade of white recorded upwards of two feet of rain. The map effectively communicates the widespread nature of the biggest rainfall totals as the system stalled out over the South and dumped immense amounts of precipitation.

(NASA Image)

MORE: Flooding in the South