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- February 15, 2005 (2.9 MB)
- January 27, 2005 (3.7 MB)
Unseasonable torrential rains drenched northern South America in February 2005. By February 17, at least 55 had died in floods and mudslides in the mountains of northeastern Colombia, and dozens more had been killed across the border in Venezuela. On February 11, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite detected high water levels on rivers southwest of Lake Maracaibo. The swollen, sediment-laden rivers form a wide blue smudge across the bright green vegetation in the top false-color image. By contrast, more clearly defined river channels were filled with clear, darker water on January 27. In both images, clouds are white and pale blue, while bare earth is pink.
References & Resources
NASA image created by Jesse Allen, Earth Observatory, using data obtained from the MODIS Rapid Response team.
