2021: Astonishing images from weather satellites

Satellites are our weather eyes from space. They capture many aspects of our beautiful planet and often are the first ones to catch phenomenal weather events or occurrences that are happening well beyond the clouds, sometimes even below the Earth’s surface.

As technology advances, weather satellites are helping limit the aftermath costs and are also saving lives. Much analysis is carried out after weather events to bring out weaknesses, what lessons can be learned, and how they can be improved.

One really neat thing about satellites is that they can even pick up images of the snow on the surface. It is often easy to distinguish the snow from the clouds, because in a loop of images, the clouds will move, while the white blanket of snow will stay still. Sometimes very cold temperatures can play tricks on the satellites. This happened last February over Texas when the frigid polar air reached the Lone Star State and the satellite turned purple. This could have been confused with high clouds, but the state was pretty much cloudless, but the frigid temperatures were the ones making the colours pop up!

Last summer, the worst European floods in 100 years occurred. There were at least 120 deaths and over a thousand people are still missing. The heavy rains devastated parts of Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. Emergency services and infrastructures were overwhelmed as many tried to reach higher grounds. Rivers flooded communities, sweeping houses, and cars down the street.

Before and after images show flooding in one corner of the Netherlands using special satellite bands.

California’s mega-drought continues. Yes, recent rain and snow have helped put a small dent in the drought, but it will take much longer to completely alleviate the dry conditions that have persisted through the years. Check out these images taken by Landsat 8 of Lake Powell located between Utah and Arizona. One was taken on September 1, 2017, and the other one on August 27, 2021.

From hot spots to actual smoke, fires can be detected from space. Often California wildfires are detected by satellites, but in August the Siberian wildfires were detected by Europe’s Sentinel-3 satellite.

The 2021 Atlantic Basin hurricane season ended with many records, once again. It produced above-average activity, used up all the names in the list and it was the fourth costliest on record.

Here’s a snap of all the storms captured by GOES-East and a video below of all the storms from May through September.

It snows in Hawaii—at least in the highest elevations. Just like at the beginning of the year, winter storms dumped snow atop Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. The storm in December not only had blizzard warnings in effect but a strong Kona low storm brought major flooding to lower elevations.

A tornado outbreak swept through Kentucky leaving 58 fatalities and countless injuries. One of the longest-tracked tornadoes in U.S. history, a violent EF-4 twister ravaged through Mayfield, Ky., leaving hundreds without homes. Much like how it happens in hurricanes, satellites picked up how much darker the towns were after the tornado outbreak.

Satellites can be so sensitive at times! In this case, GOES-16 mesoscale view picked up a view, not only of the storm coming out of eastern Colorado and its beautiful rotation but also the dust being picked up by its fierce winds.