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EO Natural Hazards: Cyclone Nargis Floods Myanmar (Burma)
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May 5, 1:30pm
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•http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Natu...
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"Foreign aid workers in Burma have concluded that as many as
50,000 people died in Saturday's cyclone, and two to three million are homeless,
in a disaster on a scale comparable with the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami."
My heart goes out to the people of Burma whose suffering under a brutal dictatorship has
become so much worse this week. I hope we will all spare them a kind thought
as we go about our week in conditions so much more fortunate. OliviaB
Cyclone Nargis Floods Myanmar (Burma)
Flood water can be difficult to see in photo-like satellite images, particularly when the water is muddy. This pair of images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite use a combination of visible and infrared light to make floodwaters obvious. Water is blue or nearly black, vegetation is bright green, bare ground is tan, and clouds are white or light blue.
On April 15 (top), rivers and lakes are sharply defined against a backdrop of vegetation and fallow agricultural land. The Irrawaddy River flows south through the left-hand side of the image, splitting into numerous distributaries known as the Mouths of the Irrawaddy. The wetlands near the shore are a deep blue green. Cyclone Nargis came ashore across the Mouths of the Irrawaddy and followed the coastline northeast. The entire coastal plain is flooded in the May 5 image (bottom). The fallow agricultural areas appear to have been especially hard hit. For example, Rangôn (population over 4 million) is almost completely surrounded by floods. Several large cities (population 100,000-500,000) are in the affected area. Muddy runoff colors the Gulf of Martaban turquoise.
Cyclone Nargis
Cyclone Nargis passed over Myanmar (Burma) after formed in the Bay of Bengal. At one point, Nargis was a Category 4 strength typhoon, with sustained winds of 210 kilometers per hour (130 miles per hour), according to Unisys Weather.
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